living on the word. This message was originally preached on March 15th in the year 1883 by Charles Haddon Spurgeon. The text for today comes from the book of Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy chapter 8 verse 3. Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

The main thing for every one of us is life. What would it profit a man if he should gain the whole world and lose his life? What good would riches be if life were gone? What is the value of thousands of acres of land to a dead man, or the applause of nations to one who lies in his grave?

The first thing, therefore, that a man is to look to is life. There are some persons who take this truth in the wrong way and so make a mess of their lives. They say, we must live, meaning they must live at all costs. But that is not always true. That we must continue to live here is not an absolute necessity. It would be far better for us to die than to live on sinning in this world. Martyrs have preferred to suffer the most fearful deaths rather than say the slightest word that might bring disgrace upon the name of Christ. And every true Christian would prefer immediate death rather than dishonor his great Lord and Master.

Now, brethren, according to our common understanding, if we must live, we must eat. We must eat bread. which is a staple of life. And sometimes when bread is scarce and hunger sends out its sharp pangs, men have been driven to steal to provide themselves with necessary food. You remember how our divine Lord, who is our perfect example in all things, acted when he was in the same situation? When he had fasted in the wilderness forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. And then the evil one came to him and said, If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.

This was, in effect, saying, Stop trusting in your heavenly Father. He has obviously deserted you. He has left you in the wilderness among the wild beasts. And though He feeds them, He has not fed you. He has left you to starve. Therefore, help yourself, exercise your own power. Though you have trusted your life to God's care and being here on earth, you have become your Father's servant, yet you need to take back some of your power that you gave up and use it on your own behalf. Take some of that power which you have devoted to this great work and employ it for your own comfort. Stop trusting in your father. Tell those stones to become bread."

Immediately God's word flashed out as the master drew it out like a sword from its case. saying, it is written, man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. It was only by the use of this sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, that Satan was driven away from Christ. And I want to use that weapon now. I will say of it what David said of the sword of Goliath. There is none like it. Give it to me. That sword with which Christ won the victory is the best one for His servants to employ.

This answer of our Lord to the tempter teaches us that the nourishment of our life, although naturally and according to the ordinary appearance of things, seems to depend on bread, yet in reality depends on God. It is God who gives the bread the power to nourish the man. To me it seems a great mystery that bread or any other kind of food should do this. I can understand how, it being matter in a certain form, therefore tends to build up the material structure of the body, albeit that the process is a very wonderful one by which bread turns into flesh and blood and bone and muscle and hair and all sorts of things by a perpetual working of the power of God. But it is still more remarkable that this material should seem, at any rate, to some extent, to nourish man's heart, so that the very soul and the living principle within him should be dependent on its being sustained by the food of the body.

Can any of us explain why it is that the inner spirit starts in motion the muscles of the hand and the nerves that communicate with the brain? How is it that the intangible spirit, which you cannot see or hear, which in itself is not made of any visible material, yet possesses powers by which it controls the flesh and bone of this outward body? And how is it that the material substance in bread somehow works to keep our spirit in connection with this flesh and blood? I cannot explain this mystery, but I believe it to be a continual miracle worked by God.

I am frequently told that miracles have ceased. It seems to me that miracles are the rule of God's working and that everywhere and everything There are things of marvel and of wonder to be perceived if we will only look beneath the outward appearance. Dig for a while beneath the mere surface of the ground, and you shall see a world of wonders.

" According to our text, we are called on to observe that the power which keeps us alive is not in the bread itself, but in God. who chooses to make use of the bread as an agent in nourishing our body. I do not infer from this truth that therefore I ought never to eat, but to live by faith, because God can make me live without bread. Some people seem to me to be very unwise when they infer that. Because God can heal me, therefore I am never to take medicine for a disease. because I am to trust in God. I do trust in God, but I trust in God in God's own way. And his process is this. If I wish to satisfy hunger, I must normally eat bread. And if I wish to be cured of any problem, I must take the remedy he has provided. That is the general rule of his working.

But still, it would be an equally grievous error and would show another form of folly if we were to say that it is the bread or the medicine that does the work. It is the bread that feeds, it is the medicine that heals, but it is God who works by these means, or if he pleases, who works without them. If it were necessary that his child should live, and he did not choose to put ravens into commission to bring him bread and meat, or if he did not command a widow woman to sustain his servant, yet he could support him without any means. For man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

" When the Lord speaks and commands that he live, he lives. God spoke the world into existence. His Word still keeps the whole structure of the universe together and surely that Word is able to sustain our soul in life even without the use of outward means or by the use of means as long as God pleases. That, I think, is the meaning of the text. God took his people into the wilderness where there was no sowing, no reaping, no making of bread, and they seemed as if they would die of hunger there. But then God made the man a drop from heaven, to show that, if not by one means, yet by another he could sustain them. He took them where there was no rippling brooks or gentle flowing streams of water. But his servant Moses struck the rock. and the water came out to show that God could give men drink, not only from the fountains of the deep below or by rain from the clouds above, but from the solid rocks if he's so pleased.

God can give you bread to eat, my friend, though not perhaps in the way you hope. It may come in a fashion of which you have never dreamed of. I have read of one who was condemned to starve to death. And as the judge pronounced the sentence, he said to him, And what can your God do for you now? The condemned man replied, My God can do this for me. If he pleases, he can feed me from your table. And so it happened. Though the judge never knew it, for his own wife sent food to the poor man and kept him alive until he finally regained his liberty.

God has a way of using the most unlikely instruments to affect his purpose. He can, if he pleases, make the waters stand up in a heap until the chosen nation has passed through the sea, or he can permit the fire to blaze around his people and yet keep them from being burned, as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego came out unharmed from Nebuchadnezzar's burning fiery furnace, and not even the smell of fire was on them.

I now come to the more spiritual meaning of the text, and I pray God will make it to be rich food for your souls. I ask you to notice first the word. every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Secondly, consider the use we are to make of the word, we are to live on it. And then thirdly, note the application of that word to our lives, every word of it. For according to the text, we do not live on some words that come out of God's mouth, but man lives on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

First, then let us think a little about the Word of the Lord. What do we mean by the expression, the Word of God? What do we mean by the expression, the Word of God? God chose to use figures of speech that we can understand. For we are all like little children who have to learn by pictures. Now when it comes to a man, his word is often the expression of his wish. He desires a certain thing to be done and he says to his servant, do this, or to another, come here, or go there. His word is the expression of his wish.

Sadly, with us, our wishes are often strong and our words are feeble. We command that a certain thing be done, but it is not done. We have perhaps a thousand wishes in our hearts, which if we were to speak them, they would make us to appear ridiculous. We may wish to do this and that, but if we were to say, let these things be done, they would not be done in spite of all of our commanding. For often where the word of a man is, there is weakness. It is only where the Word of God is that there is power. When God wills something, He says, Let it be done, and it is done immediately. Power goes out from God with His will.

God said, Let there be light, and there was light. God said, Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear. And it was so. God said, let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night. And let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years. And let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth. And it was so.

He has but the will anything and it comes to pass. His word is his will in motion. His power put into action. That is the common and emphatic sense of the term. God's word is also the expression of His truth. It is also the expression of His truth.

A man says to us, I promise you so and so. And we say to him, we rely on your word. A man's honor is involved in his word. He who does not keep his word is not a man of honor, and he soon falls very naturally and very properly into disgrace with his fellow men. Men will not trust one whose word is not reliable.

Sadly, the words of men are not only feeble, but they are often pickled and false. But the Word of God is the promise of one who knows what He is saying, who is able to perform what He promises, and who will never change nor ever be untrue, so that if we look at His Word as being the expression of His truth, we see His faithfulness. And on these two, the power that can keep the promise and the will which is faithful to keep it, we may rest with joy and confidence.

Again, if a man is a true man, his word is a revelation of himself. One of the ancients said of a very handsome boy when he had looked at him, Speak, boy, for then I can see you. And we often see a great deal more of a person's character when he speaks than when we simply look at him. There is many a pretty face that has been admired because of its appearance, but when its owner's not very pretty tongue has begun to speak, love has almost been driven to the limits of one's mental resources to find any cause for admiration. There are some people who talk in such a way that when we see their inner selves, They appear as unlovely as their outer selves seem to be attractive.

But a true man reveals himself by his words. Therefore it is that the Lord Jesus Christ is called the Word of God. Jesus Christ is God speaking. God thinks what he says and the thoughts of God are embodied in the person, work, life, and death of Jesus Christ his dear Son. With all reverence we should say that God never could have revealed himself so fully in any other way than by giving his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Isaac Watts' hymn says it best,

Nature with open volume stands
to spread her maker's praise abroad,
and every labor of his hands
shows something worthy of God.
But in the grace that rescued man,
his brightest form of glory shines,
here on the cross, his fairest drawn,
in precious blood and crimson lines.
Here I behold his inmost heart,
where grace and vengeance strangely join,
piercing his son with sharpest smart
to make the purchased pleasures mine."

So you see, dear friends, the expression, the Word of God, has a very wide range. But my text commands me to remind you of something very sweet. Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. It is beautiful to think of the scriptures as coming from the mouth of God. Do not merely look on those pages of your Bible on which it is written and over which the critics cribble and quarrel. They stumble at almost every letter and word of it and so miss its meaning and spirit.

But as for you, pray that the Holy Spirit will speak it into your heart as coming immediately and directly from the very mouth of God. When Calper looked up at his mother's portrait, after to his great sorrow she had long been gone from the earth, he cried out, O that those lips had language! You are to regard this Word of God as continually coming from His lips. The Holy Spirit puts into the Word a power which makes it go right into your heart with the very tone and majesty of the God of grace, the Father of your spirit. The man that falls ever fresh from heaven.

The Israelites never had stale bread in the wilderness. They gathered the angel's food new every morning, just as it came down from the skies. In the same way, take every passage of God's word as coming to you fresh from God. Regard it as your Heavenly Father speaking it straight to your heart.

I was reading one day in one of Guy Pearce's books, a pretty thought that I had never noticed before. He puts into the mouth of a very simple but godly man who is talking about his heavenly father, words something after this fashion, and I quote, I am quite sure my father will take care of me. He never rested during the six days of creation until he had made a place for his child to come and live in. until he had put the finishing stroke on it, and got the house all ready for Adam, he would not rest at all. And now my Heavenly Father will not rest until he has made heaven ready for me, and made me ready for heaven, and all that I want on the way he will surely give me."

When I read that, it came just as fresh to me as if I had seen the second chapter of the book of Genesis written. It did not look to me like an old, stale record, but a fresh and living message proceeding out from the mouth of God then and there. And there is many a dear child of God who, taught of the Spirit, has given new insights and interpretations to Old Texts. and as it were, hung the old oil paintings in a better light till we have said as we have looked at them, can they be the same pictures? They seem to have such fresh beauty and a fresh force put into them.

This is what you are to feed on dear children of God, his own word as you have it here, but you must feed on it as continually coming out from his very mouth. The text further says, that man lives on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Man lives on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

Don't you be at all disturbed, dear friends, concerning the doctrine of inspiration, as to how the Bible is inspired, whether by this process or by that. I do not really mind how it is inspired, I only know that it is inspired and that is enough for me. And I believe that it is verbally inspired. I do not say that either of our English versions of the Bible is inspired, for there are mistakes in the translations, but if we could get at the original text just as it was first written then I would not be afraid to say that every jot and tittle, every cross and every dot of it was infallibly inspired by God the Holy Spirit.

I believe in the infallibility and the infinity of the Holy Scripture. God inspired the whole Bible, Genesis as well as Revelation and all that is in between. And he desires us to believe in one part of the word as much as in another. If you do not believe that, it will not be food for you. I'm sure that it will not. It will only be something that will make you sick and not food. It cannot feed your soul as long as you are disputing about it. If it is not God's word, then it is man's word or the devil's word. And if you want to live on the devil's word or on man's word, then go ahead. I do not. But God's Word is food for the soul that dwells with God and it cannot be satisfied with anything else.

Now let us pass on to our second point. That is, the use we are to make of God's Word. The use we are to make of God's Word. We are to live on it. We are to live on it. I was sitting one day in the forest under a beech tree. I liked to look at the beech tree and study it, as I do many other trees. For every tree has its own distinctive features and habits, its special ways of twisting its branches and growing its bark and opening its leaves and so forth. As I looked up at that beech tree and admired the wisdom of God in making it, I saw a squirrel running around and around the trunk and up the branches, and I thought to myself, ah, this beech tree means a great deal more to you than it does to me, for it is your home, your living, your all. Its big branches were the main streets of his city, and its little limbs were the lanes. Somewhere in that tree he had his house. and the beech nuts were his daily food. He lived on it. Well, now the way to deal with God's Word is not merely to contemplate it or to study it as a student does, but to live on it as that squirrel lives on his beech tree. Let it be to you spiritually your house, your home, your food, your medicine, your clothing, the one essential element of your soul's life and growth. There are some, whom I know, who take God's word and play with it. They are interested in its narratives. They study its histories in the light of modern research and so on. But it was not meant merely for such a purpose as that. Loaves of bread are not put on the table for you to carve them into different shapes simply to look at. They are intended to be eaten. That is the proper use for bread and that is the proper use for God's Word. Some do even worse than this. They do not so much play with the Bible as fight over it. They contend fiercely for a doctrine. and condemn everybody who cannot accept their particular interpretation of it. I think that I have heard preachers who have seemed to me to bring out a doctrine on purpose just to fight over it. I have a dog. And that dog has a rug on which he sleeps. And when I go home tonight, he will bring it out and shake it in front of me. Not that he particularly cares for his rug, but because he know that I will say, I'll have it, and then he will bark at me, and in his language say, no you won't. Now there are some people who bring out the doctrines of grace in the very same way. I can see them trotting along with the doctrine of election just so some Arminian brother may dispute with them about it, and then they can bark at him. Do not act this way, beloved. The worst implement you can use to knock a man down is the Bible. It is intended for us to live on, not to be the weapon of our controversies, but our daily food on which we rejoice to live. I do not think that our Bibles were given to us that we might merely employ them as telescopes to peer into the heavens. to try to find out what is going to happen in the next 50 years. I am weary with the prophecies and speculations that as a general rule end in nothing. I know some brethren with whom one cannot talk about any passage, but they say, Oh, you have not seen Mr. So-and-so's latest book in which he says that this passage does not apply to us. It is meant only for the Jews. Or, that was only for the church in the wilderness and not for us in these days. Let us not so misuse the word of God, but prize it as the bread on which we are to live. Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. But how can we live on words, one asks? You have spoken well. We cannot live on words if they are the words of men, but there is nothing like the word of God to live on. To that word, we owe our life. He spoke us into being. He spoke the soul into our body. By that word of God, we are daily kept alive. Let God only reverse it and say, return to dust, O sons of men. and we must at once go back to the dust from where we came. Certainly, it is by God's word that we have begun to live spiritually. We believed in Christ through the effectual working of his word. The living and incorruptible seed was sown in our heart, and by it we began to live. And it is by that same word that our soul has been sustained in life. Up to this moment, you and I have received no source of nourishment from the Holy Spirit except by the Word of God. Christ said, My flesh is real food and my blood is real drink, and it is by Him, as the Word of God, that my life, our lives, will continue to grow. There is no development of the Christian that will come to him in any way but by God's Word, incarnate or inspired. He who spoke us into being must speak us into a yet stronger being. Faith is God's gift, but so is assurance. The very first spark of life is the gift of God's grace, but so is the holy flame of zeal. That all comes from God's word. And when we are about to enter heaven, that last touch that shall perfect us will be given by the word of God. Our Lord prayed for his disciples. Sanctify them by the truth. Your word is truth. And that word shall complete the entire process. See then, beloved, on what your inmost spirit must live on. God's Holy Word. Brothers and sisters, may I ask you whether you are all sufficiently aware of this great truth? You never received spiritual life by your own feelings. It was when you believed God's Word that you lived. And you will never get an increase of spiritual life and grow in grace by your own feelings or your own doings. It must still be by your believing the promises and feeding on the Word. There is no other food for your souls. All else will, in the end, prove to be nothing but chaff. Are you hungry? Come and feed on the Word. Have you backslidden? Come and feed again on the Word. God heals His people by feeding them. How so, you ask? When the church at Laodicea was neither cold nor hot, so that Christ felt that he must fit her out of his mouth, yet even then he said to the angel of that church, Here I am. I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him and he with me. I am bold to say There is no cure for lukewarmness like a good supper with Christ. If Christ enters in and eats with you and you with him, your lukewarmness will disappear at once. Do not begin to be saved by faith and then go on to be saved by works. Do not try to mix the two. If you have lived on the pure, simple word, honoring it by a living, God-given faith, then go on to live in the same way and grow by the same word. Feed on it continually that you may be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. Now I come to my last point, which I must insist upon immediately, and that is the application of the word of God for the feeding of our souls. the application of the Word of God for the feeding of our souls, by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. If you restrict yourselves in your food to one or two items, every physician will tell you that there is a danger that your body may not be supplied with every form of nutriment that it requires. A good wide range of diet is recommended to those who would have vigorous health. And in spiritual things, if you stay in one part of God's word, you may live on it. But the tendency will be for you not to obtain complete spiritual health because of the lack of some nutriment with which the word would have supplied you had you used it all. Every part of the Word of God is required for men and women to live in the highest and healthiest state. Look, for instance, at the doctrines in the Word of God. But I do not like doctrine, one says. Do you know what you are saying? You are a disciple, yet you do not like teaching, for doctrine means teaching. For a disciple to say that he does not like to be taught is as good as to say that he does not like to be a disciple and, in fact, that he is not one in the truest meaning of that term. Whatever truth is written down in God's Word is important for us to know. Oh, says one, but there are some truths that are not important. I don't know of any. In places where they cut diamonds they sweep up the dust, because the very dust of diamonds is valuable, and in the word of God all the truth is so precious that the very tiniest truth, if there is such a thing, is still diamond dust and is unspeakably precious. But, you object, I do not see that such a truth would be of any practical use. You may not see it, dear friend, but it is so. If I could write out my experience as pastor of this church, I could show that there have been persons converted to Christ by doctrines that some might have thought quite unlikely to produce that result. I have known the doctrine of the resurrection to bring sinners to Christ. I have known scores brought to the Savior by the doctrine of election, the very sort of people who, as far as I can see, would never have come, if that truth had not happened, to be a pointed doctrine that just struck their heart in the right place and fitted into the crevices of their nature. I believe that everything that is in God's Word ought to be preached, ought to be believed, and ought to be studied by us. Every doctrine is profitable for a purpose. If it is not food, it is medicine, and sometimes children need medicine as much as they need milk. Every plant in God's garden has some purpose, so let us cultivate them all and not neglect any doctrine. Yet when I come to God's word, I find that it is not all doctrine, and I discover many commands Now perhaps a man says, I do not care about commands. We used to have a group of Christian people, so called, who if you preached about any duty of a believer quickly said, we cannot bear the word duty. It has a legal sound in it. I remember saying to one who called me a preacher of legalism, I said to him, that's all right. Legal means lawful. And you mean, I suppose, that I am a lawful preacher and that you are an unlawful person to object to my preaching. But so it used to be. If you preached good, sound doctrine, if you preached on the privileges of believers, then they were all as pleased as possible. But when you first began to talk about the practical parts of God's word, then right away they were offended. No wonder. for their conscience convicted them for their neglect of those portions of the Scriptures. But dear friends, we live on the commands as well as on the doctrines, and they have become to us our necessary food. You know what David said of the Lord's commandments. They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold. They are sweeter than honey, than honey from the comb. By them, as your servant warned, in keeping them there is great reward.

Blessed be God, there is also a large portion of this book that is taken up with promises. Dear friends, be well acquainted with the promises. I have often found it profitable to consult that little book in which Dr. Samuel Clark has arranged the promises of scripture under different headings. It is very helpful, very helpful when you are in trouble to refer to all the promises which are given to those who are in similar circumstances to yours. For instance, to the sick, or to those in poverty, or those suffering from slander. As you read over the promises, one after another, you say to yourselves, this is my checkbook I can take out the promises as I want them, sign them by faith, present them at the great bank of grace, and come away enriched with present help in time of need. That is the way to use God's promises so that they will minister to the life of our spirit.

But dear friends, much of God's word is taken up with histories. Here you have the story of the creation and of the fall, of Abraham and of Isaac, and of Jacob and of Moses, and of the kings and princes and the people of Israel. You ask, perhaps, is this food? Certainly it is. There are critics nowadays who belittle the Old Testament and talk as if the Bible was comprised of nothing but the Gospels. Even the epistles are thought to be of inferior quality. But this is all wrong. For man lives on every word of God and often a history, giving us an example of faith or a proof of God's faithfulness in helping his tried people. Often this becomes more suitable food than the promise by itself might be. There is more force, men say, in the concrete than there is in the abstract. Certainly, there is more power in a thing put into actual life than there is in that same thing merely stated in words.

If you ever go to the picture galleries of Versailles, you may walk through miles of galleries among portraits of kings and noble men of different ages, but you do not see anybody stopping to look at them. Neither do you care to see them yourself. They are just portraits, but downstairs there are paintings of the same men, only they are pictured in battle array or in various positions which show them in action. Now you stand and look at them, for you are interested in the representation of the scenes in which they lived. So sometimes God's promises hang like pictures on the wall and we do not notice them. But when we see men who have trusted those promises and proved the truth of them, then there is a sort of human interest about them which wins our attention and speaks to our hearts. Never neglect the historical parts of God's word, for they are full of food to the children of God.

It is precisely the same with regard to the prophecies. I once heard Mr. George Mueller say that he liked to read his Bible through again and again, and he especially liked to read those portions of the Bible which he did not understand. That seems like a rather strange thing to say, does it not? For what profit can come to us if we do not understand what we read? The good man put it to me like this, he said, there is a little boy who is with his father, and there is a good deal of what his father says that he comprehends, and he takes it in, and he is very pleased to hear his father talk. But sometimes his father speaks of things that are quite beyond him, yet the boy likes to listen. He learns a little here and a little there, and in time, When he has listened year after year, he begins to understand what his father says as he never would have done if he had run away whenever his father began to talk beyond his comprehension. So it is with the prophecies and other deep parts of God's word. If you read them once or twice but do not comprehend them, still study them. Give your heart to them. For in time the precious truth will permeate your spirit, and you will invisibly drink in wisdom which otherwise you never would have received. Every part of the Word of God is food for the soul. My dear friends, it may be that there is a message of warning which speaks very sharply to you, but which is also most profitable for you. Perhaps some Sunday, as you leave church, you might have been caused to say, our pastor has not comforted us this morning. He seems to have humbled and rebuked us. Yes, my friends, I know that it is true sometimes, but it is for your profit. For as Hezekiah said, by these things men live. It frequently happens that we need humbling, and proving, and testing, and bringing down. And every right-minded child of God will say, do not let my training be according to my mind, but let it be according to God's mind. That sermon which pleases us most may not profit us at all, while the one which grieves and angers us may perhaps be doing us a most essential service. When the word of God searches you through and through, open your heart to it. Let the wind blow right through your whole being and carry away every rag and relic that ought to be taken from you. There are some of God's words that are very short, but they contain an abundance of food for the soul. I have sometimes stood still as I have been looking at a text, and I have felt like Jonathan when he found the honey. I could not eat it all. I could only dip my finger into it and taste it, and I wanted to call you all up to see if you would come and share this sweetness. At other times, on my way home, when I myself had not received much during the sermon, the Master has given me a feast on the trip home. And I have laughed to myself again and again with the very joy of heart over some precious passage out of which fresh light has broken through to cheer my spirit and to make me glad in the Lord. Oh, my friends, listen to the word. Listen to the word, my brothers and sisters. Listen to it as God's word and as coming out from his mouth. Suck it down into your soul, you cannot have too much of it. Feed on it day and night, for thus will God make you to live the life that is indeed life. If there is a poor soul here today that wants to find eternal life, oh my dear friend, I bid you, I beg you to seek it in God's word and nowhere else. I thought I would go home and pray," says one. Do so, but at the same time remember that your prayers are of little worth without God's word. Listen to God's word first and then go and tell God your own word, for it is in His word of promise rather than in your word of prayer that salvation is to be found. Remember that grand sentence in the book of Exodus where God says, When I see the blood, I will pass over you. It is not said when you see the blood, but when I see it. So when God looks upon Christ's shed and sprinkled blood, it is then that he looks on you with pity and compassion. Look where God looks, and then your eyes will meet his. If you look to Christ and God looks to Christ, then you shall see eye to eye. and you shall find joy and peace in believing. God the Father admires Christ. Poor soul, do you admire him too? Then there shall be a point on which you both will agree. God the Father entrusts his honor and glory to Christ. You trust your soul to Christ. Then you and the Father will agree again. God grant that you may do so this very hour. Remember this one text as you go on your way today. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life. God grant that every one of you may have that eternal life. For Christ's sake, Amen.