The Power of Aaron’s Rod

Spurgeon uses the image of Aaron's rod swallowing all the magicians' rods as a picture of the way genuine divine grace — wherever it truly enters a human life — swallows up every competing allegiance: the awakened sinner finds worldly pleasures turn to ashes and a single craving for pardon drowns out every other desire; the new believer finds that trust in Christ swallows every other confidence (self-righteousness, ceremonies, sacraments) leaving nothing to stand on but Christ alone; and the mature Christian finds that love for Christ swallows up every other love, so that family, honor, wealth, and even life itself are held loosely, willing to be surrendered the moment they compete with the Savior. He then draws a sharp inference: anyone whose religion coexists peacefully alongside worldliness, stinginess toward God's cause, and a six-day-a-week indifference to Christ's kingdom has not actually received this divine work — for a faith that can be folded up and put away on Monday morning, or a charity that only releases coins in fractions too small to calculate, is no true faith at all; a Christian is not a man who wears religion as a Sunday uniform but one in whom Christ runs in the blood, works in the hands, gazes from the eyes, and speaks from the tongue in every ordinary moment of every day. He closes with three reasons why this consuming quality is appropriate: the gravity of the danger being escaped (Hell is no trifle to be considered with half a mind), the greatness of the reward being pursued (Heaven deserves a man's whole soul), and above all the incomprehensible love that brought Christ down from glory to the cross — a love that, if honestly faced, makes giving him anything less than everything an absurdity — and he urges every hearer to let Aaron's rod swallow up all other rods, making Christ not the occupant of a back room in the heart, but King of kings within it.Sermon delivered by Charles Spurgeon on July 26, 1863.