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The sermon presents sin as deeper and more extensive than human beings can fully know, affecting nature, motives, thoughts, actions, and omissions. God’s law is spiritually comprehensive and exposes the impossibility of justification through moral effort or religious feeling. The appropriate response is humility, repentance, and faith in Jesus Christ rather than confidence in personal righteousness. Spurgeon closes with assurance that Christ died and lives to save, and that His blood is sufficient for every sinner who believes.
Theological center: Human total depravity and the condemning holiness of God make self-righteous salvation impossible, but Christ’s atoning blood has infinite efficacy for every believer.
Applications: Reject self-righteousness · Do not trust feelings · Believe in Jesus Christ · Come to Christ as you are
Primary texts: Psalm 19:12 · Psalm 51:5-7 · Matthew 5:28
“Who can understand his errors?” Psalm 19:12 WHAT we know is as nothing when compared with what we know not. The sea of wisdom has cast up a shell or two upon our shore, but its vast depths have never known the footstep of the searcher. Even in natural things, we know but the surface of matters. He that has traveled the wide world over, and has descended into its deepest mines, must yet be aware that he has viewed but a part of the mere crust of this world, that as for its vast center, its mysterious fires, and molten secrets, the mind of man has not as yet conceived them. If you will turn your eyes above, the astronomer will tell you that the undiscovered stars, that the vast mass of worlds which form the Milky Way, and the abundant masses of nebulae—that those vast clusters of unknown worlds, as infinitely exceed the little that we can explore, as a mountain exceeds a grain of sand. All the knowledge which the wisest men can possibly attain in a whole lifetime is no more than what the child may take up from the sea with his tiny cup, compared with the boundless waters which fill their channels to the brim. Why, when we are at the wisest, we have but come to the threshold of knowledge, we have taken but one step in that race of discovery which we may have to pursue throughout all eternity. This is equally the case with regard to things of the heart, and the spiritual things which concerns this little world called man. We know nothing but the surface of things. Whether I talk to you of God, of His attributes, of Christ, of His atonement, or of ourselves and our sin, I must confess that as yet we know nothing but the exterior, that we cannot comprehend the length, the breadth, the height of any one of these matters. The subject of this morning—our own sin, and the error of our own hearts, is one which we sometimes think we know, but of which we may always be quite sure that we have only begun to learn, and that when we have learned the most we shall ever know on earth, the question will still be pertinent, “Who can understand his errors?” Now, this morning I propose first of all, very briefly indeed, to explain the question, then at greater length to impress it upon our hearts, and lastly we will learn the lessons which it would teach us. I. First then, let me EXPLAIN THE QUESTION—“Who can understand his errors?” We all acknowledge that we have errors. Surely we are not so proud as to imagine ourselves to be perfect. If we pretend to perfection we are utterly ignorant, for every profession of human perfection arises from perfect ignorance. Any notion tha…