A Hearer in Disguise

Spurgeon uses the story of Jeroboam's wife coming in disguise to the blind prophet Ahijah as a framework for addressing three groups he spots in his own congregation: the occasional hearer — typically graceless, arriving under pressure of trouble rather than love for God, but welcomed warmly nonetheless, since some of the most useful members of his church came in exactly this way — while warning solemnly that Jeroboam's wife herself, having heard the tidings, perished with her husband anyway, and that hearing the gospel without yielding to it only adds to one's condemnation. He then dwells on the useless disguise — pointing out that Jeroboam's wife could fool everyone with sight but not the blind prophet, whose God saw through her instantly — and turns this into a penetrating examination of every kind of hypocrisy in his congregation: the person who assumes the posture of prayer without praying, sings without meaning a word, attends the Lord's Table without belonging to the Lord, wears a churchwarden's respectability while their inner life is as dry as Bunyan's tinder, and warns with genuine grief that the discovery of such a disguise at the gate of Heaven — "Come out, wife of Jeroboam, I know you!" — is the most dreadful fate imaginable. He closes with the heavy tidings of Ahijah's prophecy applied personally: God's wrath already resting on every unconverted soul, death within reach of every person in the building before the next week is out, and judgment following hard after — but with a sweet interruption for any sinner who is willing, offering Christ's finished work in its entirety (the bath is filled, the robe is woven, the crown is bought, the Heaven is prepared) and urging every hearer to simply trust him now, since Jesus carries not one end of the burden of sin but the whole of it. A sermon delivered by Charles Spurgeon on July 31, 1864. Listen for free on the following platforms: Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/1Rndn9d... Podcast Index - https://podcastindex.org/podcast/7491057 iHeartRadio - https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-da... Podcast Addict - https://podcastaddict.com/podcast/dai... Castro - https://castro.fm/podcast/fc718d93-28... Castbox - https://castbox.fm/channel/6814639?co... Deezer - https://www.deezer.com/us/show/100221... PlayerFM - https://player.fm/series/daily-sermon...