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Faith is the instrument used by the grace of God to save a man. Why?

A thoroughly experimental sermon, in which Spurgeon takes Job as something of a template for all believers, suggesting that Job was favoured (as others may sometimes be) with particularly vivid impressions of God, some striking sense of his majesty and the glory of his perfections. Such views of the Lord truly make an impression upon us, bringing us low in ourselves. This is no generic sense of lowness, according to Spurgeon, but rather a profound consciousness of sin, which in turn leads to a heartfelt repentance, which our preacher unpacks in some detail. Here, particularly, Spurgeon brings the truth of God's Word close to home, pressing it into your hearts, and asking how we hope to deal with God if such a man as Job was so profoundly humbled by this glimpse of his glory. Of course, his answer lies in the righteousness of Christ alone, by whom only we can stand accepted before God, our sins put away and a righteousness established for us in which God himself delights. Incidentally, it might be worth a glance at the texts read before Scripture noted, as usual, at the end of this sermon. Usually, it would be a chapter, or a portion of one. On this occasion, it is the bulk of two chapters, with a selection from two others. If nothing else, this reminds us that Spurgeon is conscious of the broader context of the texts which he preaches, and seeks to situate each sermon within the broad sweep of Scripture, the book in question, and the immediate scope of the text itself.

"How may faith be illustrated?" asks Spurgeon. There follows a delightful collection of everyday examples of faith taken from the visible world.

This sermon is numerically significant on several levels. It is the two thousandth sermon, the last sermon of Volume XXXIII in the Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, and a sermon prepared to be read on the first day of the year of 1888. As so often with these 'major marker' sermons (ones that break through particular numerical boundaries), and all the more so when those markers are loaded up like this, Spurgeon deliberately returns to the very core of his ministry and the delight of his own soul—the atoning sacrifice of the Lord Jesus. The sermon is itself is of the utmost simplicity, as Spurgeon seeks to come to the text, and to come at the congregation. He shows how, in the verse in question, God treats sin as a disease and provides a cure for that disease in the stripes of the Lord Christ, a disease which is immediately and completely effective wherever it is applied. In truth, Spurgeon never strays very far from this theme, but an occasion like this makes it all the more imperative for him to state once more the touchstone of his ministry.

We are saved by grace through faith. Spurgeon gives concise defintions of both.

The life of the believer is, or ought to be, full of soul blessing, and the pursuit of the believer ought always to be soul-winning.

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