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The sermon contrasts God’s perfect immutability with humanity’s instability after the fall. Genuine Christians are urged to repent of inconsistency because it weakens their witness and usefulness, while religious hypocrites are warned that outward observance cannot conceal an unchanged heart. Those who reject religion are confronted with the certainty and terror of divine judgment. Spurgeon finally proclaims Christ’s incarnation, sinless life, death, resurrection, and atonement, inviting sinners to repent and believe for forgiveness, eternal life, and peace with God.
Theological center: Salvation rests on Christ’s substitutionary atonement and is received through repentance and faith, while God’s final judgment exposes every false profession.
Applications: Examine your spiritual stability · Test the reality of your faith · Repent of despising God · Believe in Christ’s atonement
Primary texts: Genesis 49:4 · 2 Corinthians 5:10 · John 3:15
“Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel.” Genesis 49:4 PERFECT stability has ceased from the world since the day when Adam fell. He was stable enough when in the garden. He was obedient to his Master’s will, but when he ate of the forbidden fruit he did not only slide himself, but he shook the standing places of all his posterity. Perfect stability belongs alone to God. He alone, of all beings, is without variableness or shadow of a turning. He is immutable, He will not change. He is all-wise, He need not change. He is perfect, He cannot change. But men, the best of them, are mutable and therefore to a degree, they are unstable and do not excel. Yet it is remarkable that, although man has lost perfect stability, he has not lost the admiration of it. Perhaps there is no virtue, or rather, no compound of virtues which the world more esteems than stability of mind. You will find that, although men have often misplaced their praise, and have called those great who were not great, morally, but were far below the level of morality, yet they have scarcely ever called a man great who has not been consistent, and who has not had strength of mind enough to be stable in his principles. I know not how it is, but so it is—whenever a man is firm and consistent—we always admire him for it. Though we feel certain that he is wrong, yet his consistency in his wrong still excites our admiration. We have known men whom we have thought to be insane—they have conceived a design so ridiculous that we could only laugh at them and despise their idea. But they have stuck to it and we have said, “Well, there is nothing like a man standing to a thing,” and we have even admired the senseless, brainless idiot, as we have thought him, when we have seen him stubbornly insisting that his idea would at last triumph, and persevering in futile endeavors to realize his wish. The weathercock man is never admired. As a politician or as anything else, he will never succeed. He must be one thing or another, or the world will never respect him. Now, my brethren, if it be so in earthly things, it is so also in spiritual. Instability in religion is a thing which every man despises, although every man has, to a degree, evil in himself. But stability in the firm profession and practice of godliness will always win respect—even from the worldly, and certainly will not be forgotten by Him whose smile is honor and whose praise is glory—even the great Lord and Master—before whom we stand or fall. I have many characters here today whom I desire to address in the words of my text, “Unstable as water, th…