The Broad Wall Around the Church by Charles Haddon Spurgeon.

Our text this morning comes from the book of Nehemiah, chapter 3, verse 8. The Broad Wall. It seems that around Jerusalem of old, in the time of her splendor, there was a broad wall which was her defense and her glory. Jerusalem is a type or picture of the Church of the Living God. It is always good when we can see clearly, distinctly, and plainly that around the church to which we belong there runs a broad wall. This idea of a broad wall around the church suggests three things, separation, security, and enjoyment. Let us examine each of these in its turn.

First, the separation of the people of God from the world is like that broad wall surrounding the holy city of Jerusalem. When a man becomes a Christian, he is still in the world, but he is no longer to be of it. He was an heir of wrath, but now he has become a child of grace. Being of a distinct nature, he is required to separate himself from the rest of mankind, just as the Lord Jesus Christ did, who was holy, harmless, undefiled, and separated from sinners. The Lord's Church was separated in His eternal purpose. It was separated in His covenant and decree. It was separated in the atonement, for even there we find that our Lord is called the Savior of all men, especially of them that believe. An actual separation is made by grace, is carried on in the work of sanctification, and will be completed in that day when the universe shall be burned up and the saints shall be caught up together with the Lord in the air. And in that last tremendous day, He shall divide the nations as a shepherd divides the sheep from the goats. and then there shall be a great gulf fixed, across which the ungodly cannot go to the righteous, neither shall the righteous approach the wicked.

" Now practically, my business today is to say to those of you who profess to be the Lord's people, to take care that you maintain a broad wall of separation between yourselves and the world. I do not say that you are to adopt any distinctiveness of dress or to take up some particular style of speech. Such habits sooner or later create hypocrisy. A man can be as thoroughly worldly in one outfit as in another. He may be quite as vain and conceited with one style of speech as with another. No, in fact, he may even be more of the world when he pretends to be separate than if he had left the pretense of separation alone. The separation which we plead for is moral and spiritual. Its foundation is laid deep in the heart and its reality is very obvious in the life.

Every Christian, it seems to me, should be more scrupulous than other men in his dealings. He must never swerve from the path of integrity. He should never say, it is the custom. It is a perfectly understood practice in the business. Let the Christian remember that custom cannot sanction wrong and that its being understood is no apology for misrepresentation. A lie understood is not therefore true. While the Golden Rule was more admired than practiced by ordinary men, the Christian should always do to others as he would have them do to him. He should be one whose word is his bond and who, having once pledged his word, swears to his own hurt but does not change.

There ought to be an essential difference between the Christian and the best moral person. because of the higher standard which the gospel teaches and the Savior has exemplified. Certainly the highest point to which the best unconverted man can go might well be looked upon as a level below that which the converted man will never dare to descend to. Moreover, the Christian should especially be distinguished by his pleasures. For it is here, usually, that the man shows his true colors. A Christian should especially be distinguished by his pleasures.

We are not totally ourselves. For normally, in our daily labors, our pursuits are dictated by necessity rather than by choice. We are not alone. The society we are thrown into imposes certain restraints on us. We have to put the control ourselves. The true man does not then show himself until the day's work is done. Then the birds of a feather flock together. It is the same with the multitude of traders and other businessmen as it was with those saints of old, of whom, when they were released from prison, it was said, on their release, they went back to their own people. Likewise, your pleasures and pastimes will give evidence of what your heart truly is and where it is. If you can find pleasure in sin, then you choose to live in sin, and unless grace prevents it, then you will surely perish in sin. But if your pleasures are of a nobler kind, and your companions of a devout character, if you seek spiritual enjoyments, If you find your happiest moments in worship, in communion, in silent prayer, or in the public assembling of yourselves with the people of God, then your higher instincts become proof of your holy character and you will be distinguished in your pleasures by a broad wall which effectively separates you from the world.

Such separation should be carried, I believe, into everything which affects the Christian. It should be carried into everything which affects the Christian. What have they seen in your house? Was the question asked of Hezekiah. When a stranger comes into our house, it should be so ordered that he can clearly perceive that the Lord is there. A man ought scarcely to spend a night in our home without gathering that we have a respect of the invisible God. and that we desire to live and move in his holy light. I have already said that I would not have you to cultivate being different just for differences sake. Yet most men are satisfied if they only do what other people do. You must never be satisfied until you do more and are better than other people, having discovered a manner and course of life that transcends the typical life of the worldly person. as much as the path of the eagle in the sky transcends that of the mole which burrows under the soil.

This broad wall between the godly and the ungodly should be most conspicuous in the attitude of our mind. It should be most conspicuous in the attitude of our mind. The ungodly man has only this world to live for. Don't be surprised if he lives very earnestly for it. He has no other treasure. Why shouldn't he get as much as he can out of this? But you, Christian, you profess to have immortal life. Therefore, your treasure is not to be amassed in this brief span of existence. Your treasure is laid up in heaven and available for eternity. Your best hopes far exceed the narrow boundaries of time and fly beyond the grave. Your spirit must not, therefore, be earthbound and demeaning, but soaring and heavenly. There should always be such an air about you as one who has his shoes on his feet, his cloak tucked into his belt, and his staff in his hand. Away, away, away to a better land. You are not to talk of this world as though it were to last forever. You are not to hoard it and treasure it up as though you had set your heart on it, but you are to be soaring through this life as though you did not have a nest here and never could have, but expect to find your resting place among the cedars of God and the hilltops of glory. Depend on it. The more unworldly a Christian is, the better it is for him.

I think I could mention several reasons why this wall should be very broad. First, if you are sincere in your profession of faith, then there is a very broad distinction between you and unconverted people. Nobody can tell how far life is removed from death. Can you measure the difference? They are as opposite as the two poles. Now, according to your profession, you are a living child of God. You have received a new life, whereas the children of this world are dead in their sins. How obvious is the difference between light and darkness? You profess to have been in the darkness, but now you are made light in the Lord. There is, therefore, a great distinction between you and the world if you are what you profess to be. You say, when you put on the name of Christ, that you are going to the celestial city, to the New Jerusalem, but the world turns its back upon the heavenly country and goes downward to that other city of which you know that destruction is its doom. Your path is different from theirs. If you are what you say you are, the road you take must be diametrically opposite to that of the ungodly man. You know the difference between their end and yours. The end of the righteous shall be everlasting glory, but the end of the wicked is destruction. Unless you are a hypocrite, there is such a distinction between you and others as only God himself could make, a distinction which originates here to be perpetuated throughout eternity. When the social diversities caused by rank and dependency, riches and poverty, ignorance and learning, shall have all passed away, the distinctions between the children of God and the children of men, between saints and scoffers, between the chosen and the castaway, will still exist. I pray that you will maintain a broad wall in your conduct, as God has made a broad wall in your state and in your destiny.

Remember again that our Lord Jesus Christ had a broad wall between Him and the ungodly. Look at Jesus and see how different He is from the men of His time. All His life long you observe Him to be a stranger and a foreigner in the land. Truly He drew near to sinners, as near as He could draw. and he received them when they were willing to draw near to him. But he did not draw near to their sins. He was holy, blameless, pure, and set apart from sinners. When he went to his own city of Nazareth, he only preached a single sermon, and they would have thrown him off the cliff if they could. When he passed through the street, he became the song of the drunkard, the laughingstock of the foolish, the target at which the proud shot out their errors of scorn. Finally, he came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. They determined to throw him out of the camp, so they took him to Calvary and nailed him to the cross as a criminal, a promoter of rebellion. Jesus was the great dissenter, the great nonconformist of his age. The National Church of the time first excommunicated and then executed him. He did not seek difference in things trivial, but the purity of his life and the truthfulness of his testimony aroused the temper of the rulers and the chief men of their synagogues. He was ready in everything to serve them and to bless them, but he would never blend with them. They would have made him a king. Ah, if he only would have joined the world, the world would have given him the chief place, just as the world's prince of darkness said on the mountain, all this I will give you if you will bow down and worship me.

But he drives away the fiend and stands immaculate and separate even to the very end of his life. If you are a Christian, be a Christian. If you follow Christ, go outside the camp. But if there is no difference between you and your fellow man, what will you say to the king in the day when he comes and finds that you have on no wedding garment by which you can be distinguished from the rest of mankind? Because Christ made a broad wall around himself, there must also be one around his people.

Moreover, dear friends, you will find that a broad wall of separation is abundantly good for yourselves. It is abundantly good for yourselves. I do not think any Christian in the world will tell you that when he has given way to the world's customs, he has ever benefited by it. If you can go and find an evening's amusement in a suspicious place and feel benefited by it, I am sure that you are not a Christian. For if you were truly a Christian, it would pain your conscience and be unfit for the holy activities of the heart.

Ask a fish to spend an hour on dry land, and I think if it did comply, the fish would find that it was not much to its benefit, for it would be outside of its element. And it will be the same with you in communion with sinners. When you are compelled to associate with worldly people in the ordinary course of business You find much that irritates the ear, that troubles the heart, and annoys the soul. You will often be like righteous lot, annoyed with the conversation of the wicked. Your soul would mourn and sigh to come out and wash your hands of everything that is impure and unclean. Since you find no comfort there, you will long to get away to the pure, the holy, the devout, the edifying fellowship of the saints,

Make a broad wall, dear friends, in your daily life. If you begin to give way just a little to the world, you will soon give way a great deal. Give sin an inch and it will take a mile. Take care of the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves is an apt motto of economy. So too, guard against little sins if you want to stay clear of the great transgressions. Look after the little approaches to worldliness, the little giving-ins to the things of ungodliness, and then you will not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.

Another good reason for keeping up the broad wall of separation is that you will thereby do the most good to the world. That you will thereby do the most good to the world. I know Satan will tell you that if you just bend a little and come near to the ungodly, then they also will come a little way to meet you. But that is not true. You lose your strength, Christian, the moment you depart from your integrity. What do you think ungodly people say behind your back if they see you inconsistent just to please them? Oh, they say, there is nothing in his Christianity but vain pretense, the man is not sincere. Although the world may openly denounce the rigid Puritan, it secretly admires him. When the big heart of the world speaks out, it has respect for the man that is sternly honest and will not yield his principles. No, not even a fraction of an inch.

In such an age as this, when there is so little sound conviction, When principle is cast to the winds and when broad and tolerant views in both thought and practice seem to rule the day, then it is still true that a man who has decided in his belief speaks his mind boldly and acts according to his profession of faith, such a man is sure to command the respect of mankind.

Depend on it, woman. Your husband and your children will respect you less if you say, I will give up some of my Christian principles, or I will go sometimes with you to places which are sinful. You cannot help them out of the mire if you go and plunge into the mud yourself. You cannot help to make them clean if you go and blacken your own hands. How can you wash their faces then?

You, young man in the factory, you, young woman at the office, if you keep chaste and pure for Jesus, not laughing at jokes which should make you blush, not mixing up with pastimes that are suspicious, but on the other hand, being tenderly jealous of your conscience as one who shrinks away from a doubtful thing, considering it to be a sinful thing, holding sound faith and being scrupulous of the truth, if you will keep yourselves pure and holy then your presence in the midst of others shall be as though an angel shook his wings, and they will say to one another, refrain from this or that for now, for so and so is here. They will fear you, and in a certain sense, they will admire you in secret, and who can tell but that they someday may come to imitate you.

Would you tempt God? Would you challenge the desolating flood? Whenever the church comes down to mingle with the world, it becomes necessary for the faithful few to flee to the ark and seek shelter from the avenging storm.

When the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, then the Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and he sent the flood to sweep them away. God's people must be a separated people and they shall be. It is his own declaration. The people shall live apart and not consider themselves one of the nations.

The Christian is, in some respects, like the Jew. The Jew is the picture of the Christian. You may give the Jew political privileges as he ought to have. He may be adopted into the state as he ought to be, but he is a Jew. and a Jew he must be. He is not a Gentile, even though he calls himself English, or Portuguese, or Spanish, or Polish. He remains one of the people of Israel, a child of Abraham, always a Jew, and you can mark him as such. His speech betrays him in every land.

So should it be with the Christian. mixing with other men as he must in his daily calling, going in and out among them like a man among men, trading in the market, working in the shop or office, mingling in the joys of the social circle, taking his part in politics like a citizen as he is, but at the same time having a higher and a nobler life a secret into which the world cannot enter, and showing the world by his superior holiness, his zeal for God, his sterling integrity, and his unselfish truthfulness, that he is not of the world, even as Christ was not of the world. You cannot know how concerned I am for some of you, that this broad wall should be kept up, for I detect in some of you, at times, a desire to make the wall very narrow, or perhaps to pull it down altogether. Brethren, beloved in the Lord, you may depend on it, that nothing worse can happen to a church than to be conformed to this world. Write Ichabod upon her walls then, for the sentence of destruction has gone out against her. But if you can keep yourselves as a garden walled around, chosen and made special ground, you shall have your master's company. Your graces shall grow, you shall be happy in your own souls, and Christ shall be honored in your life.

Our second major point today is, the broad wall around Jerusalem indicated safety. The broad wall around Jerusalem indicated safety. In the same way, dear friends, a broad wall around Christ's church indicates her safety too. Consider who they are that belong to God's church. A man does not become a member of Christ's church by baptism, nor by birthright, nor by morality. Christ is the door into the sheepfold. Everyone who believes in Jesus Christ is a member of the true church. Being a member of Christ, he is a member, consequently, of the body of Christ, which is the church.

Now, around God's church, the election of grace, the redeemed by blood, the special people, the adopted, the justified, the sanctified, around the church there are walls of stupendous strength, weapons which guard them safely. When the foe came to attack Jerusalem, he counted the towers and the walls and noted them well. But after he had seen the strength of the holy city, he fled away. How could he hope ever to scale such walls as those? Brethren, Satan often counts the towers and walls of the new Jerusalem. Anxiously does he desire the destruction of the saints, but it shall never be. He that rests in Christ is saved. I will be, said Jehovah, a wall of fire around you. God will save and protect his people by walls and fortifications.

The Christian is surrounded by the broad wall of God's power, the broad wall of God's power. If God is omnipotent, Satan cannot defeat him. If God's power is on my side, who then shall hurt me? If God is for us, who can be against us? The Christian is surrounded by the broad wall of God's love, the wall of God's love. Who shall prevail against those whom God loves? I know that it is vain to curse those whom God has not cursed, or to defy those whom the Lord has not defied, for whomever he blesses is surely blessed.

Balak, the son of Zephor, sought to curse the beloved people and he went first to one hilltop and then to another and looked down upon the chosen camp but ah Balaam you could not curse them though Balak sought to do it you could only say they are blessed yes and they shall be blessed God's law is a broad wall around us and so is his justice too God's law and His justice is a broad wall around us. These once threatened our destruction, but now the justice of God demands the salvation of every believer. Since Christ has died instead of me, it would not be justice if I too had to die for my sin. Since God has received the full payment of the debt from the hand of the Lord Jesus Christ, then how can He demand the debt again? He is satisfied and we are secure.

The immutability of God also surrounds his people like a broad wall. The immutability of God also surrounds his people like a broad wall. I, the Lord, do not change, so you, O descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed. As long as God is the same, the rock of our salvation will be our secure hiding place. We might linger a long time on this delightful truth, for there is much to cheer us in the strong security which God has given in the covenant to his people. They are surrounded by the broad wall of electing love. We are surrounded, the church is surrounded by the broad wall of God's electing love.

Did God choose them, and now will He lose them? Did He ordain them to eternal life, and shall they now perish? Did He engrave their names upon His heart, and shall those names now be blotted out? Did He give them to His Son to be His heritage, and shall His Son lose His inheritance? Did He say, they will be Mine in the day when I make up My treasured possession? And shall he now part with them? Has he who makes all things obey him no power to keep the people whom he has formed for himself to be his own distinctive heritage? God forbid that we should doubt it.

Electing love like a broad wall surrounds every inheritor of grace. And oh, how broad is the wall of redeeming love. The wall of redeeming love. Will Jesus fail to claim the people he bought with so great a price? Did he shed his blood in vain? How can he revive hostility against those whom he has reconciled to God, not counting their sins against them? Having obtained eternal redemption for them, will he judge them to everlasting punishment? Has he purged their sins by his sacrifice, and will he then leave them to be the victims of satanic cunning? By the blood of the everlasting covenant, every Christian may be assured that he cannot perish. Neither can anyone pluck him out of Christ's hand. Unless the cross was all a fantasy, unless the atonement was a mere speculation, those for whom Jesus died are saved through his death. Therefore, after the suffering of his soul on the cross, he will see the light of life and be satisfied.

As a broad wall which surrounds the saints of God is the work of the Holy Spirit. The work of the Holy Spirit is like a broad wall which surrounds the saints of God. Does the Holy Spirit begin and not finish the operations of his grace? No. Does he give life which afterwards dies out? Impossible. Has he not told us that the word of God is the incorruptible seed which lives and stands forever? And shall the powers of hell or the evil of our own flesh destroy what God has pronounced immortal or cause disillusion to that which God says is incorruptible? Isn't the spirit of God that is given to us supposed to remain with us forever? And shall it be that he shall be expelled from that heart in which he has taken up his everlasting dwelling place?

Brethren, we are not a people who believe such foolishness We rejoice to say with Paul, I am confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion. We like to sing, grace will complete what grace begins, to save from sorrows and save from sins. The work that wisdom undertakes, eternal mercy never forsakes.

Almost every doctrine of grace provides us a broad wall a strong fortress, a mighty fortification, a grand weapon of defense. Take, for instance, Christ's security arrangements. He is the guarantee to his father for his people. When he brings home the flock, do you think he will have to report that some of them are lost? No, not so, never. I know that safe with him remains, protected by his power, what I've committed to his hands till the decisive hour. Here I am, he will say, with the children whom you have given me, and I've not lost a single one of them. He will keep all the saints safe and secure to the very end. The honor of Christ is involved. If Christ loses one soul that leans upon him, the integrity of his crown is gone. For if there would be one believing soul in hell, The prince of darkness would hold up that soul and say, aha, you could not save them all. Aha, you captain of salvation. You were defeated here. Here is one poor little Benjamin, one of bunions ready to halt that you could not bring to glory. And I will now have him as my victim forever. But it shall not be. Every gem shall be in Jesus's crown. Every sheep shall be in Jesus' flock. He shall not be defeated in any way or in any measure. He shall establish the cause He undertakes. He shall eternally conquer. Glory be to His great and good name. Thus, my friends, I have tried to show you the broad walls which are all around the believers. They are saved, and they may say, the virgin daughter of Zion has shaken her head at her enemies and left them to scorn. Who shall make any charge against God's elect? It is God that justifies. Who is he that can condemn? It is Christ that died, yes, and it is Christ that has risen from the dead, who sits at the right hand of God, and who also makes intercessions for us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Now I will close with our third and last main point, which is the idea that the broad wall suggests enjoyment. that the broad wall suggests enjoyment. The walls of Nineveh and Babylon were broad, so broad that there was found room for several chariots to pass each other on the tops of the walls. Here men walked on top of the walls at sunset and talked and promoted good fellowship. If you have ever been to the city of Yort, You know how interesting it is to walk around on the top of the broad walls that are found there. But our figure is drawn from the Orientals. They were accustomed to come out of their houses and walk on top of the broad walls. They used them for rest from toil and for the pleasures of recreation. For the rest from toil and for the pleasures of recreation. It was delightful when the sun was going down and all was cool to walk on those broad walls. And so when a believer comes to know the deep things of God and to see the defenses of God's people, he walks along them and he rests. Now, he says, I am at rest and peace. The destroyer cannot assault me. I am delivered from the noise of soldiers in the place where I draw water. And here I can exercise myself in prayer and meditation. Now that salvation is appointed for walls and fortifications, I will sing a song to him who has done these great things for me. I will take my rest and be quiet, for he that believes has entered into rest. There is, therefore, now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus. Broad walls then are for rest, and so are our broad walls of salvation. Those broad walls were also for communion. They were also for communion. Men came to the walls and talked with one another. They leaned over the wall and whispered their loving words, conversed on their business, comforted one another, related their troubles and their joys, So when believers come to Christ Jesus, they commune with one another, with the angels, with the spirits of just men made perfect, and with Jesus Christ, their Lord, who is best of all. Oh, on those broad walls, when the banner of love waves over them, they sometimes rejoice with a joy unspeakable, in fellowship with him who loved them and gave himself for them. It is a blessed thing in the church when you get such a knowledge of the doctrine of the gospel that you can have the sweetest communion with all the church of the living God. And then the broad walls were also intended for gaining perspective, for gaining perspective. The citizen went up to the broad wall and looked away from the smoke and dirt of the city within. right across to the green fields and the gleaming river and the far off mountains, delighted to watch the mowing of hay or the reaping of corn or the setting sun beyond the distant hills. It was one of the common enjoyments of the citizen of any walled city to go to the top of the wall in order to look off into the distance. So when a man climbs up into the altitudes of gospel doctrines, and has learned to understand the love of God in Christ Jesus, what views he will see, how he looks down on the sorrows of life, how he looks beyond that narrow little stream of death, how sometimes when the weather is bright and his eye is clear enough to let him use the telescope, he can see within the gates of pearl and behold the joys which no mortal eye has seen and hear the songs which no mortal ear has heard. For these are things, not for eyes and ears, but for hearts and spirits. Blessed is the man who dwells in God's church, for he can find on her broad walls places from which he can see the king and his beauty, and the land which is very far off. Ah, dear friends, I wish that these things applied to every one of you, but I am afraid that they do not. For many of you are still outside the wall, And when the destroyer comes, no one will be safe except those who are inside the wall of Christ's love and mercy. I pray to God that you would escape to the gate at once, for it is open. It will be shut. It will be shut one day, but it is open now. When night comes, the night of death, the gate will be shut and you will then come and say, Lord, Lord, open the gate to us. But the answer will be, too late, too late. You cannot enter now. But it is not too late yet. Still, Christ says, see, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. Oh, that you had the will to come and put your trust in Jesus. For if you do so, you will be saved. I cannot speak to some of you about security, for there are no broad walls to defend you. You have run away from the security. Perhaps you have been patching up your own man-made walls with some weak mortar, a righteousness of your own, which will all be thrown down as a sagging wall and a tottering fence. Oh, that you would trust in Jesus. Then you would have a broad wall which all the battering rams of hell shall never be able to shake. When the storms of eternity shall beat against that wall, it shall stand firm forever. I cannot speak to some of you about rest and enjoyment and communion, for you have sought rest where there is none. You've got a peace which is no peace. You have found a comfort which will be your destruction. May God cause you to be distressed and constrain you by painful stress to flee to the Lord Jesus and get true peace, the only peace, for He is our peace. Oh, that you would come close to Christ and trust Him. Then you would rejoice in the present happiness which faith would give you. But the sweetest thing of all would be the prospect which should then unfold to you the eternal happiness which Christ has prepared for all those who put their trust in Him. Amen.