Rubbish by Charles H. Spurgeon

A Sermon by C. H. SPURGEON

"There is much rubbish..." - Nehemiah 4:10 - Excerpted from MTP Vol 20 Year 1874, pgs. 74-77, 79-84

The great work comprised in the building up of the church... Now, this enterprise is the work of God. He alone can build the church. "When the Lord shall build up Zion, he shall appear in his glory," and we may build as we may, but "except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it." Still, our full and firm conviction that it is God's working does not at all interfere with the grand truth that he employs agents for the building up of his church in the world; that, in fact he has commissioned us, his chosen servants, and and sent us into the world, each one according to our ability and opportunity, to labour for him. We work because God works by us. We are hindered, however, in this service by the fact that there is much rubbish in the way. It always was so.

When Paul began to build for God, and the apostles went forth as wise master-builders, there lay before them in towering heaps the old Jewish rubbish, hard to remove, heavy to bear away, and in quantity equal to a huge hill. The foundation was there; thank God we have not to lay that; that is laid in Christ Jesus, and firmly laid, and "other foundation can no man lay;" but the Jews, with their traditions, had overlaid the foundations; they had added to the word of God, they had put glosses upon it, they had taken away its real meaning, and put to it a meaning of their own. They had invented rites and ceremonies innumerable, and traditions of the fathers dark and mysterious, so that though a man should seek to find out the truth, he could not by reason of the abundance of the confused material and traditional superstition with which they had covered it up.

The apostles had to begin their gospel labour amongst their fellow-countrymen in the midst of this much rubbish. No sooner did they begin to remove the worthless deposits than the lovers of tradition assailed them, raised a great dust, and became their violent persecutors, following them from city to city, scandalising them, and committing all manner of violence against them. You cannot remove ruins without arousing the owls and bats. The most rotten rubbish upon earth is sure to find some defender. By this rubbish many have gained their wealth, and they are full of wrath if any threaten to disturb it. The apostles soon found that they had fallen upon troublous times, yet by God's help they cleared away that rubbish, and were enabled to build their wall, till the New Jerusalem became famous in the earth.

They encountered in the wider world of the Roman empire the rubbish of old paganism; and oh, what rubbish that way! He who is acquainted with the classic writers knows how polluted were the people of their times. Their satirists ascribe to them mirthfully vices which even with tears we would not dare to mention. The superstitions of the age were grovelling to a hideous degree; their very gods were monsters of crime, and their sacred rites orgies of lust and drunkenness. The priests had successfully endeavoured to make vice into a religion, and under the pretence of mysterious worship had devised means for pandering to the basest passions of the most corrupt human nature.

It is no small mass of rubbish which the student of today sifts over as he makes researches into the Greek and Roman mythology. Men could not find out God, for gods many and lords many stood in the way. Neither could they believe in the simplicity of Jesus Christ, because their foolish heart was darkened. "God made man upright, but he hath found out many inventions;" and all these inventions helped to turn him from his uprightness, and to pervert his judgment. Yet those who went before us laboured on amidst that foul and noisome rubbish, and were so successful in their earnest, excavations, that at this day no one thinks of worshipping Jupiter, or Saturn, or Venus, or Mercury; these demon-deities have gone to the limbo from whence they came. They have been smitten - smitten by the gospel, and they have withered like grass, so that no man boweth himself before them anymore. The God of truth has come, and these bats and owls of the night have betaken themselves into obscurity and oblivion. This rubbish was cleared away, and the foundations were built upon by earnest men that went before us, though they had to lay each stone in martyr blood, and cement it with agonies and tears.

Moreover, remember that in those early days the church in her building had to encounter the very much rubbish of the various philosophies of mankind. There was a kind of "feeling after God" in the heathen mind; but this feeling after God was misdirected and proudly self-confident, and therefore it missed its way, and in the process of thought the more spiritual-minded amongst men (if I may venture to call men spiritual at all who were not renewed by grace) invented theories and imaginings, which they thought to be exceeding wise but which in fact were folly itself dressed out in the robes of vainglory. These philosophies had a great following, and exercised so subtle and powerful an influence that they were felt even in the church itself. In the writings of the apostles Paul and John you continually meet with allusions to the great Gnostic philosophy which perverted so many Christians. Ever since that day human wisdom has been a greater curse to the church than anything else.

The ignorance of Christians has never been so evil a thing, bad as it is, as the vain knowledge, the false wisdom, with which men have been puffed up in their fleshly minds. It is an ill day when men know too much to know Christ. It is a great misfortune when men are too manly to be converted and to become as little children, and sit at the feet of the great Teacher: yet there are many professors of religion who talk as if this was their condition, and as if they were proud of it. Even at this present time the outside philosophies of unchristian men infect the church, spoil her, injure her, dilute the wine of the kingdom, overturn the children's milk, and to a great extent poison the bread of life. Sad that it should be so, but the rubbish of philosophy has always been in the way of the building up of the wall of the church of God, and the story of the apostolical age may serve as a great comfort to us in these evil times. As they were hindered so are we, but as they persevered and overcame even so will we, by out great Master's aid.

After that lot of rubbish had been cleared away, the task was only begun, for soon after apostolic times, and first zeal of Christians had gone, there came the old ROMAN rubbish, which in the end proved a worse hindrance than all which had preceeded it. This Popish rubbish was found in layers - first one doctrinal error, and then another, and then another, and then another, and then another, till at this time the errors of the Church of Rome are as countless as the stars, as black as midnight, and as foul as hell. Her abominations reek in the nostrils of all good men. Her idolatries are the scorn of reason and the abhorrence of faith. The iniquities of her practice, and the enormities of her doctrine, almost surpass belief.

Popery is as much the masterpiece of Satan as the gospel is the masterpiece of God. There can scarcely be imagined anything of devilish craftiness or Satanic wickedness which could be compared with her, she is unparalleled, the queen of iniquity. Behold upon her forehead the name, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. The church of Rome and her teachings are a vast mountain of rubbish covering the truth.

For weary years good men could not get at the foundation because of this very much rubbish. Here and there a Wycliffe spied out the precious cornerstone, and leaped for joy because he could get his foot upon it, and say, "Jesus Christ himself, elect and precious, is the stone on which I build my hope." Here and there a John Huss, or a Jerome of Prague, or a Savonarola, in the thick midnight, yet nevertheless found out the foundation, and wept their very hearts out because of the much rubbish which threatened to bury even them while they were seeking the foundation.

A master excavator was MARTIN LUTHER; how grandly he laid bare the glorious foundation of justification by faith alone! An equally grand worker at this great enterprise was Master JOHN CALVIN, who laid open long stretches of the ancient foundations of the covenant of grace. Well was he supported by his brother of Zurich, Zwingle, and John Knox in Scotland, and others in this land. They cleared away for a while some of the rubbish, but there was such a mass of it that they had to throw it up in heaps on either side, and it is beginning to come crumbling down again on to the foundation, and to cover it up once more. A perfect reformation they could not work, and the remnant of the rubbish is now our plague and hindrance. Everywhere the much rubbish is being diligently cast upon the wall by the emissaries of the evil one, and we can scarcely get to the foundations to build thereon the gold and silver and precious stones which God commits to us with which to build up his own house.

Alas, there is very, very much rubbish. I saw in Rome that the waggons which took away the earth from the Forum were marked "Regia Scava." They belonged to the royal excavations; and I long to see royal excavators, employed by the King of Kings, get to work to excavate again the foundations of the wall of Jerusalem, and cart away some of the tremendous heaps of rubbish that still lie upon the walls. God grant we may see good and great work done in this direction before long.

But, beloved friends, if all this rabbinical, and pagan, and philosophical, and Roman rubbish were all gone, still the work would scarcely have begun, for there is yet very much rubbish of other kinds lying hereabout. There is much rubbish arising from the world, the flesh, and the devil, so that we are not able to build the wall. Look at human sin, how that impedes us! Oh, if there were no false systems of religion, if priest and scribe were silent, if false prophet and Antichrist were both out of the way, yet the sins of men are a vast and hideous mass of rotten rubbish, and our labours of love are hindered thereby. How hard it is to get at human ears, for the world has the first word, and often the last word, with the most of men. Eargate is choked with rubbish.

How harder still it is to get at human hearts, for there Satan reigns as in his own palace, and takes care to erect huge barricades and earthworks of the rubbish of carnal lust and pride and unbelief. Men are wrapped up in indifference to eternal things, like mummies in their bands and gums. They give all their energy to the answering of the question "What shall we eat and what shall we drink, and wherewithal shall we be clothed?" Immortal as they are, they live only for mortality. Though their grandest destiny lies in eternity, yet all their efforts are bounded by the narrow space of time. Charm, O thou charmer, never so wisely, but this adder hath no ear for thee. This people, bent on its lusts, will still follow its own devices. Though Christ beckon with his pierced hand, yet turn they their back on him; and even he from Calvary cries -

"Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by, Is it nothing to you that Jesus should die?

He is despised and rejected of men; they see no form nor comeliness in him whose countenance contains within itself all celestial beauty. They cannot be got at by love or law, by tears or terrors, by prayers or preachings; they are so absorbed in earthly things. We cannot build the wall for their much rubbish. They are wedded to their sins; they cling to their idols; they will not even think upon their soul, and their God, and their Saviour; they choose their own delusions and reject their own mercies, and it seems as if everything in the world helped them this way, for the business of life, the care and the ease, the quiet and the noise, the tumult and the turmoil thereof alike ensnare them; all these things are transformed by their alienated hearts into a mass of rubbish. With one man it is the pursuit, the arduous pursuit of learning, with another an intense greed for gold, with a third ambition, with a fourth the lust of pleasure; but in each man the heap of rubbish prevents out getting at the heart. We cannot build the wall.

Who among us has not often gone back to his God, and said, "Who hath believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?" And this age of competition seems to make the thing worse than ever. Some are so poor that they tell us they cannot listen, for they have to work and toil like slaves for their bread merely to keep body and soul together; and as for those who are rich - O God, help the rich! Still is it true, and perhaps truer now than ever, that "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God;" for the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches are a mass of rubbish, so that we cannot build the wall.

Oh, how sad is the retrospect of the pastor as he remembers the many in whom he could never reach the conscience, because of the intervening rubbish, and how mournful is the prospect that lies before him! Our only consolation is that, if we cannot build, there is One who can; and if the rubbish be so much that the strength of the bearers there is an arm which is not weary, and can perform all that is needed.

There is very much rubbish about, brethren; and therefore for the present distress, if every Christian minister were to keep to preaching Christ and him crucified, and nothing else, I think he would do well; and if every Christian man were to just keep to the plain truths of Scripture, and have them worked into his own soul by the Holy Spirit, and then speak them out with power, and live for soul-winning, and care for nothing else, he would do well.

But there is very much rubbish. Oh, the rubbish of pride, of unbelief, of evil lustings, of anger, of despondency, of self-exaltation! Brethren, it is not worth while to stir it, it is such a foul heap! I have no desire to turn cinder-sifter to it, for there is never a jewel in it that will pay for the sifting; but there it is, and the building of grace does not advance as we could wish, because of the corruption which still abideth in us, notwithstanding all that some may say.

But there are some others who have had choice seasons of fellowship with Christ, and they have been for awhile free from temptation, and there has been no great unbreaking of the great deep of corruption within them; and therefore they say, "Ah, now I am getting on: I think, somehow, I am getting up to the higher life. I should not wonder that I should be perfect one of these days." Rubbish, brother! It is all rubbish, every bit of it, it is not worthy harbouring for an instant. It may be very glittering rubbish, it looks amazing like gold, but "all is not gold that glitters." Any notion of our own attainments which could lead us for a moment to speak of what we are with any degree of complacency is only rubbish. For my own part, I desire constantly to stand at the foot of the cross, with no other testimony concerning myself than this -

"I the chief of sinners am, But Jesus died for me."

Personal holiness is to be sought for with all our hearts, and it can only be obtained by faith in Jesus Christ - by simple faith in him. He gives us power to overcome sin through his precious blood. Christ is made of God unto you "wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption;" in him be all your glorying, and in him alone, for if not so, the rubbish will cover up the foundation. "I know whom I have believed." None but Jesus, none but Jesus. There rests our souls' only hope, upon his precious blood and righteousness; every other hope we heartily abhor. Well, the foundation is laid. Blessed be God for that! When a man is brought to rest alone in Jesus, then there is laid for him in Zion a sure foundation-stone, and to that he is cemented by sovereign grace.

Now, let us thank God again that the building up of his temple in us is his own work. He began it. He digged out and made clear to us our own emptiness. He cast out our self-righteousness, and he laid Christ where our self had once been. The Lord did that, and he has done everything else which has been done in us that has been worth the doing. I cannot, I am sure no brother here can, look upon any step he has ever taken as a real advance in divine life, which was taken in any strength but in the strength of God. Whatever we have done of ourselves had been much better undone, for all that nature spins will have to be unravelled sooner or later. "Salvation is of the Lord." Jonah learned that in the whale's belly. It was worth while getting into the whale's belly to learn. We want to know it through and through. Salvation is of the Lord alone, and unto him must be all the praise. And there is our comfort. It is his work to save us; we are not our own saviours, partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. It is the Bridegroom, not the bride, that is to make the bride fit for her husband. So says the scripture. "Christ loved the church, and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself, a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing." It is he that presents the bride to himself, and he that makes her fit to be presented. Blessed by God, the work is in sure and competent hands.

Look that ye be built on on the foundation. That is the last and yet the first question. Are you on the foundation? Some build very rapidly, but they are not on the foundation. Yes, you have a fine character and you make a noble profession, but is the palatial structure based on the rocky foundation, or on the sand? Our little children at the seaside will build very fine castles with their wooden spades, but the next tide sweeps all away, because it is sand built on sand. I am afraid the religion of multitudes is just that - sand built on sand. Is that your religion, dear hearer? Does it consist of church-goings, or chapel-goings, and prayer-meetings, and sacrament-takings, and all that? Well, then, it is sand built on sand. But if you are a poor and needy sinner, and you have rested your soul on Jesus, and then, renewed in heart by his Spirit, have been zealous for good works, then is it no longer sand built on sand, but the work of the Spirit of God upon the one foundation which God laid from all eternity, in the person and the work of his only-begotten Son.

The Lord bless you, every one of you, for Jesus's sake! Amen.

Author: C. H. Spurgeon