Look unto Christ!

By Elizabeth Prata

Charles Spurgeon was converted by a stumbling layman substituting in the pulpit for a pastor stuck elsewhere in a snowstorm. Spurgeon was making his way to his own church too, but the raging storm forced him to this tiny church instead, the Primitive Methodist Church at Colchester.

The layman, a cobbler or a tailor, didn’t say much, he didn’t even pronounce the words correctly, he just kept referring to the text. Here it is in the King James Version because that is the text the layman read,

Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else. (Isaiah 45:22).

You can read more of Spurgeon’s conversion story here, which is in Spurgeon’s own words and an encouraging read. You don’t have to be a seminary Ph.D. to share verses that the Lord uses to pierce a heart and a conscience.

Spurgeon referred to that moment frequently in his sermons and in his autobiography. Here is Charles Spurgeon excerpt of a sermon where he is speaking of the conscience.

Struggles of Conscience
By Charles Haddon Spurgeon September 23, 1860
Scripture: Job 13:23
From: New Park Street Pulpit Volume 6

Christ, that is the beginning and the end, the first and the last. The plain gospel is just this, “Look unto me, and be ye saved all the ends of the earth.” “But, Lord, I cannot see anything.” “Look unto me.” 

“But, Lord, I do not feel.” “Look unto me.” 

“But, Lord, I cannot say I feel my need.” “Look unto me, not unto thyself; all this is looking to thyself.”

“But, Lord, I feel sometimes that I could do anything, but a week passes, and then I am hard of heart.” “Look unto me.”

“But Lord, I have often tried.” “Try no more, look unto me.”

“Oh, but Lord thou knowest.” “Yes. I know all things. I know everything, all thine iniquity and thy sins, but look unto me.”

“Oh, but often, Lord, when I have heard a sermon I feel impressed, yet it is like the morning cloud and the early dew; it passes away.” “Look unto me,” not to thy feelings or thy impressions, look unto me.”

“Well,” says one, “but will that really save me, just looking to Christ?”

My dear soul, if that does not save thee I am not saved. The only way in which I have been saved, and the only gospel I can find in the Bible is looking to Christ. “But if I go on in sin,” says one. But you cannot go on in sin; your looking to Christ will cure you that habit of sin. “But if my heart remains hard?” It cannot remain hard; you will find that looking to Christ will keep you from having a hard heart. It is just as we sing in the penitential hymn of gratitude,—

“Dissolved by thy mercy I fall to the ground,
And weep to the praise of the mercy I’ve found.”