Trials Expected and Conquered
(No. 2877)
A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, MARCH 31, 1904.
DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON LORD'S-DAY EVENING, MARCH
12, 1876.
"When you pass through the waters, I will be with you and through the
rivers, they shall not overflow you, when you walk through the fire,
you shall not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon you. For I
am the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior: I gave Egypt
for your ransom, Ethiopia and SSeba for you." Isaiah 43:2,3.
EVEN down to the present day, the Jewish nation has not been destroyed.
It has been made to pass through fire and through water. The story of
the persecution of the Jews, both in earlier and later times, would
fill many volumes with the most harrowing details. Had they not been a
people whom God specially ordained to remain as His witnesses until the
Messiah comes again, they would have utterly perished from among the
sons of men! They have been a people scattered and peeled, rent and
torn, hunted and harried–yet they still exist. For many a century they
were equally abhorred by the heathen and the so-called Christians, yet
they have lived on and they will continue to live on until a new heart
and a right spirit shall be given to them and the Lord shall, in His
great mercy, take away the blindness which in part has happened to
Israel, so that they shall look on Him whom they have pierced and shall
mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son. Then shall come the glory
of the Gentiles, when more than the former glory of Israel shall be
restored to her.
But, Brothers and Sisters, every promise in the Scriptures, of a
spiritual nature, which is made to the literal people of Israel and to
the seed after the flesh, is, according to the Inspired teaching of the
Apostle Paul, yet more fully made to the seed of Abraham after the
spirit–for all Believers are his spiritual seed. Was he not the father
of all the faithful, not of the circumcision only, but of them, also,
who are uncircumcised, if they trust in the living God? To us, then, as
well as to the literal Israel, is this promise made. And to the Church
of God, as a whole, will it be fulfilled, even as it has been fulfilled
to her thus far. Her martyrologists have told us how often she has gone
through fire and through water, but the floods have not drowned her,
neither have the flames consumed her. At this time she stands in a
wealthy place–her Lord has set her feet in a large room. Her banner
still floats upon the breeze. No weapon that is formed against her
shall prosper and every tongue that rises against her in judgment, she
shall condemn. For her there is a noble destiny. Her full glory is not
yet revealed, but we know that when her heavenly Bridegroom shall
appear in His Glory, His bride shall share in it with Him. Yes,
Beloved, we who believe in Jesus are on the winning side–we are on the
side which has God with it and Christ with it, and eternity with
it–and the appointed day shall reveal that this is the conquering
side!
But, further, this promise, while it applies to the whole Church of
God, also applies to every individual in that Church, for it is a rule,
with the promises of God, that you may break them up as small as you
please, but they will still be after the same fashion as at the first.
Like certain crystals, which, if you break them again and again, and
again, retain the same crystalline form–which is their natural
form–so a Divine promise that is true to the whole corporate body of
the Church, is also true to every one of the members of that Church–
and true to every one of those members in every trial into which that
member may be cast! Take you, then, this promise to yourselves,
Beloved! You who are in Christ Jesus and who worship God in the Spirit,
claim this promise as made to you, just as much as if God had spoken it
out of the excellent Glory right into your ear, or as much as if you
saw Him writing, with His own eternal pen, these precious sentences as
a personal epistle to you, for He does speak them and write them to you
by His ever-blessed Spirit!
On looking at our text, we see that it very readily divides itself into
three parts. The first is this–trials must be expected by Believers.
You may have to go through fire and through water. But, secondly,
trials will not be able to destroy you. You have, in the text, the most
express declaration that you shall neither be overwhelmed nor consumed.
And, thirdly, of this blessed fact, we have the very highest assurances
given to us. They are found in the third verse of this chapter, where
we have argument after argument to prove to us that God will be with
His people, to deliver them when they are called to pass through rivers
of trial or through fiery tribulations.
I. First, then, TRIALS ARE TO BE EXPECTED BY BELIEVERS.
I suppose that some young Christians imagine that the favorites of
Heaven will never be tried, but it is not so. The first verse of this
chapter bids us fear not, for God has redeemed us and called us by our
names, and we are His. And we might, therefore, draw the conclusion
that we could live at our ease, enjoy all manner of luxuries and, as
the chosen people of God, be protected from every wintry blast!
Beloved, it is not so–if you are heirs of the Kingdom of God, you are
also, most assuredly, heirs of tribulation, for your Lord has declared,
"In the world you shall have tribulation." If you are soldiers in the
army of Christ, you are not intended to win the victory without a
conflict! And if you are ordained to wear a crown above, you are
certainly equally ordained to bear a cross below. Grace does not bring
luxury in its train, nor does it lull us into a sweet slumber and carry
us to the skies–
"On flowery beds of ease."
No, we must fight if we would reign! We must suffer for Christ if we
would be glorified with Him. Our text speaks about all this as if it
were a matter of course–"When you pass through the waters…and
through the rivers…when you walk through the fire," just as if we
hardly needed to be told that it would be so!
Our text tells us that these trials will be of various kinds. We use
the expression, "through fire and through water," to signify a variety
of severe trials. If you are a true child of God, you will have to go
through the waters. You will have to endure trial of a certain kind
which will chill you to the very marrow–trial which will seem to sweep
you off your feet, take away from you your foot-hold and carry you
along, with its rapid current, where it pleases. You must expect to
have trials of that sort. And after you have endured them long, you
must not delude yourself with the promise of relief, for, when one
trouble has gone, another will come and it will probably be of a
different character from the last one you had and will require the
exercise of another kind of Grace and another form of watchfulness!
Instead of being in the water, you will be in the fire–you will not be
chilled, now, but heated, like molten metal in a furnace–and the
fierce flame will be all around you, alarming you and filling you with
dismay and distress. It is a different trial altogether from any that
you had experienced before. You know how, in one day, the wind often
blows from quite opposite quarters of the compass and how, in a few
hours, we have, first snow, then rain, then sunshine, then wind, then
snow again, then sleet, and I scarcely know what beside–a sort of
epitome, in one day, of human life–yet a strange day, as most human
lives are–a day one never wishes to have repeated, but is glad when it
is over? God's children would not wish to live their lives over again
and they are glad when they come to the evening and can undress, and go
to the place of rest. But, in the meantime, if they are wise, they will
expect a variety of trials to come to them.
And our text seems to intimate that some of these trials will be very
terrible ones–"When you pass through the rivers"–strong, rapid rivers
that come rushing down from the hills, like Kishon, the mighty flood
which swept away Jabin and his hosts–deep, impassable rivers, perhaps,
through which, nevertheless, you will have to pass–rivers which are
like the Jordan which overflows all its banks at the time of harvest.
There will come to you trials like these and it will sometimes seem as
if you never could get over them–as if, now, your Christian career
must end, and end in failure, even as the pilgrim's course would end in
drowning if, in attempting to ford a rapid river, he was swept away.
And if the flood is so terrible, what shall I say of the fire? It is
the nature of the flood to overwhelm, but it is the nature of the fire
to consume. There are certain trials that could overwhelm our faith and
speedily consume us if there were not a secret source of
strength–Divine, Omnipotent–within our hearts and round about us. If
it were not true that "the Lord sits upon the flood: yes, the Lord sits
King forever," the rivers would long ago have overwhelmed us. And if it
were not that He makes the flaming fire to be His messenger and the
burning heat to be His servant, we would have been utterly consumed!
But we shall not be, although the trial, if it could work in its own
way, would have this result. You may quite expect that between here and
Heaven, if you have not met with it yet, you will have enough trouble
to destroy you utterly unless the Lord is your Helper. I suppose that
the most of us can already sing with the Psalmist, "If it had not been
the Lord
who was on our side, now may Israel say–if it had not been the Lord
who was on our side, when men rose up against us: then they had
swallowed us up quick, when their wrath was kindled against us: then
the waters had overwhelmed us, the stream had gone over our soul." But
because the Lord has been with us, therefore our adversaries have not
been able to prevail over us.
Our trials have not only been varied and terrible, but they have been
many times repeated. I do not think it is merely the parallelism of the
Hebrew poetry which requires the reduplication of the sentences here,
or, if it is, yet even then we may suppose the poetry to be typical of
the trials of the Believer's life. We have to pass through the waters
and, after that, through the waters again, only, this second time, it
is called through the rivers. We are encompassed, at one time, with
fire and, by-and-by, the fire comes again–only this time it is called
flame, as if the fire raged yet more furiously. No, my young Friend,
you are not done with temptation yet, and not even with the temptation
which you have overcome, for it may return in another form! No, my
Brothers and Sisters, you have not seen the last of your corruption,
not even of that corruption which you consider to be quite dead. You
have not yet passed through all the trials which Satan will cause you,
or which the world will cause you, or which the flesh will cause you.
You will have to go through not merely one river, but many rivers, and
through, not simply one fire, but through many fires before you come,
at last, to God's right hand in Glory!
And this is sometimes the sharpest pinch of our tribulation, that it
comes upon us again and again. We have all read, with great interest,
the story of Job's many trials and we have felt that the force of them
was increased by the declaration of messenger after messenger, "I,
only, am escaped alone to tell you." First the oxen and asses were
stolen by the Sabeans and the servants that were with them were killed.
Then the sheep and their keepers were slain by lightning. Then, the
Chaldeans captured the camels and slew the servants in charge of them.
Last of all came the terrible tidings of the death of all his children!
It was stroke upon stroke, sorrow upon sorrow, trouble upon
trouble–and it is this repetition of trial that bows even a strong man
down and that makes the firmest Believer begin to doubt and tremble!
But, Beloved, you must expect wave upon wave, trial upon trial. You are
not, as a soldier, after having fought one battle, to take off your
regimentals and retire to your tent and say, "I have won the victory."
That battle is but the beginning of a long campaign–and you will have
to endure the smoke and dust of the battlefield and the garments rolled
in blood, time after time–before the victor's wreath shall at last
surround your brow! So, your trials will be repeated, as well as varied
and terrible.
And, mark you, according to the text, these trials are inevitable.
"When you pass through the waters." It is taken for granted that you
have to go through them. There is no bridge and there is no boat by
which you can pass over these waters–and no tunnel by which you can go
underneath them–so you must go through them. Then it is added, "When
you walk through the fire." There is nothing said about putting out the
fire, or about waiting until the flame burns low, or the embers begin
to cool. No, you have to go through the fire and through the water. You
have not merely to dip your feet in the waves of trouble–you have to
go through them. You have not merely to go and just singe yourself a
little in the flame–it is through the fire that you have to go and
that fire will be like Nebuchadnezzar's furnace when it was heated
seven times hotter than usual. It is not a fire for you to warm your
hands–you have to tread those glowing coals–possibly with bare feet.
Are you prepared to endure that fiery ordeal? Can you so trust in the
living God as to feel sure that when you get into the midst of the
burning fiery furnace, there will be with you one like unto the Son of
God, who will preserve you by His gracious Presence? God does not
promise His people any immunity from trouble. In fact, He has foretold
that they shall have trouble. As there is no royal road to learning, so
there is no royal road to Heaven–
"The path of sorrow and that path alone, Leads to the land where sorrow
is unknown." Make up your mind that you have to go through these trials
and ask the Lord to give you Grace and courage that you may be able to
endure unto the end. These trials of the saints are appointed and
ordained and they have their destined end, so, depend upon it, if you
are a child of God, you will have more or less of them. If you have
more, then you shall have the more consolation. If you have less, you
may be grateful for the Lord's tenderness towards you and not wish for
more. But rest assured that all God's children will be baptized with
fire! He has had one Son without sin, but He has never had one child
without suffering–all the sons and daughters of God are brought under
the rod of the Covenant and are made to feel the chastising strokes of
their wise Father's hand.
II. Now, secondly, I have to remind you that TRIALS SHALL NOT DESTROY
BELIEVERS.
First of all, they shall not divide Believers from their God. That
would be destruction, indeed, but it can never be. Notice the first
sentence of our text–"When you pass through the waters." But, my Lord,
will those waters roll between You and me? No, for, "I will be with
you." Then, Lord, let them roll, for I can say, with the Apostle Paul,
"I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor
principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor
height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us
from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." "Quis
separabit?" "Who shall separate us?" asks the Apostle and the answer
is, "None shall separate us," for God and His people are indivisible!
If I said no more and sat down, there would be enough comfort, I think,
in that thought, to make you ready to rush through floods and flames
where Jesus leads the way. "When you pass through the waters, I will be
with you." You shall not have less of God because you are poor, or
because you are sick, or because your mother is taken from you, or your
children are, one by one, caught up into Heaven. Oh, no, in your
losses, crosses and troubles, you shall realize the Presence of God
even more conspicuously than you have ever done before!
Our text does not say, "When you shall tread the flowery mountain and
rest upon the soft green bank, I will be with you." I never remember
reading, in the Scriptures, a promise of that kind, or one like
this–"When you walk upon close-shaven grass, which seems like a carpet
beneath your feet, I will be with you." No, but God says, "When you
pass through the waters, I will be with you." He gives a special
promise for a special time of trial and, to meet the doubt which has so
troubled His child, He says, "Fear not: for I have redeemed you, I have
called you by your name; you are Mine."
Then our text tells us that neither the waters nor the seas shall stop
the Believer's march–"When you pass through the waters, I will be with
you." It does not say, "When you get to the waters, you shall stop
there." They cannot stop us–we are to go through them! Our way to
Heaven lies through that flood–then, through that flood we will go!
God has ordained that no troubles, however great, and no persecutions,
however terrible, shall stop the onward march of a soul predestinated
to eternal joy. Suppose it is a deep and rapid river, whose swollen
torrent seems to sweep everything before it? We shall go through it! We
shall neither be stopped by it, nor swept away by it, for the promise
is, "When you pass through the rivers, they shall not overflow you."
But what about the fire? Can we got through that? Surely we are not
fireproof–we wear no asbestos garment that shall preserve us from the
devouring flames. Yes, Brothers and Sisters, you shall pass through the
fire as well as through the water! Our text implies that your march
through the flame shall be quiet, calm and safe, for the Lord says,
"When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned." There is no
need to quicken your usual pace. If I had to go through literal fire, I
would want to run and leap through it, but the Believer is,
spiritually, to walk through the fire. That is a beautiful passage in
the 23rd Psalm–"Yes, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of
death, I will fear no evil." Walking is the pace at which men go when
nothing distresses or alarms them. "He that believes shall not make
haste," but shall walk even through the fire! What a blessing it is
that, as no trouble shall separate us from God, so no trouble shall
hinder our progress towards Heaven, but, through Divine Grace, whether
floods or flames are in the way, we shall go through them!
Our text further says that some trials which threaten to overwhelm us,
shall not be able to do so–"The rivers… shall not overflow you." You
may be carried off your feet and have to take to swimming–the blessed
swimming of faith, which casts itself upon Divine strength and spreads
out its hands as the bold swimmer does! The water will sometimes,
perhaps, be near your head for a minute, the spray will dash into your
eyes and the brine will be in your throat–but the waves shall not
overflow you, however furiously they may rage around you. There are
some trials which seem as if they must crush the life out of those to
whom they come. Possibly you are saying, "I do believe, but I am in
such a turmoil, that my mind seems quite upset. I am exceedingly
sorrowful, almost to the death of my faith." Ah, but it shall not be
quite to the death of your faith–the floods shall not overflow you!
Other trials seem as if they would consume you, as if, with fierce and
burning vehemence, they would destroy you as a martyr burns at the
stake. But what does our text say? "When you walk through the fire, you
shall not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon you." You
shall not lose faith, or hope, or love, or patience, or any Christian
Grace! You shall come out of the fire as you went into it–no, you
shall be improved by the flame, for our text says, if we read it in the
Hebrew, "When you pass through the fire, you shall not be scorched,
neither shall the flame burn you." We remem-
ber that when those three brave witnesses for God came out of the
burning fiery furnace, not so much as the smell of fire had passed upon
them! I think I see the Babylonians crowding around them and asking, in
amazement, "Are these men alive? We saw the guards, who cast them into
the fire, consumed by the great heat of the furnace–and are these men
alive who were actually in the midst of the flames?" They had to come
close and touch them, to make sure that they were not ghosts or
apparitions. When they had grasped the hand of one of the three, to see
whether it was alive, they next would want to examine it. But had not
the fire scorched their eyebrows, or their hair? No, "the fire had no
power; nor was a hair of their head singed." They were just as they
were when they went into the burning fiery furnace! It was very amazing
and, in like manner, the child of God, sustained by Divine Grace, will
be none the worse for all his troubles!
Look at Job after all his trials. The Lord gave him twice as much as he
had before–and he was neither the weaker, nor the less honorable for
all he had been called to endure. No, he was a gainer by it all! O
Brothers and Sisters, the gold loses nothing in the fire but what it is
glad to lose! The silver in the crucible loses none of its real
preciousness–it only loses its alloy. So shall it be with you,
Beloved!
III. The latter part of our text supplies us with THE ARGUMENTS AND
ASSURANCES WHICH GO TO PROVE THAT THIS WILL BE THE CASE WITH BELIEVERS.
And the first is, "For I am Jehovah "Ah, Brothers and Sisters, if you
and I are trusting to anything short of the one living and true God,
the rivers will overwhelm us and the fires will consume us! But if our
living faith rests on the living God, it is not possible for us to have
reason to be ashamed or confounded, world without end! I ask without
any fear as to the answer that may be given to me–Did any man ever
trust in God and find himself forsaken? Has it ever come to pass, in
all the history of the Church of God, that one single heir of Heaven
has had cause to be ashamed of his hope and his belief in his God? If
you rely on an arm of flesh, you will soon find it fail you. If you
turn to idol gods, and earthly priests, they will all prove useless to
you in your hour of trial–but it is not so with any who trust in the
Lord! Have we not seen the saints on their deathbeds–yes, seen them in
excruciating pain and in deep depression of spirit! Yet they have never
been ashamed of staying themselves upon their God. They have always
found this to be an Infallible protection in the time of their deepest
need–"I am Jehovah."
Now, child of God, are you afraid of the fire, or are you afraid of the
flood when you have the self-existent, eternal, almighty, unchangeable
God to trust to? O Man, be afraid to be afraid, and fear to fear, but
trust in God at all times! And, with dauntless courage, go wherever He
leads or points the way! It is the living God in whom you trust,
therefore, when you pass through the rivers, they shall not overflow
you! When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned!
The next assurance lies in the words, "your God.""I am the Lord your
God." Ah, the God in whom you trust is your own God! The God who, in an
Everlasting Covenant, has taken you to be His servant and has given
Himself to you, to be your Father, your Friend, your All-in-All–in a
word, your GOD! Now, my dearest earthly friend may fail me. The
choicest companion I have may forget me. But my God never will. There
is an enduring relationship which can never end in disappointment. "'I
am your God.' Yours, for I chose you. Yours, for I redeemed you. Yours,
for I have taken you to be Mine and I have made Myself to be yours in
the Covenant of everlasting love. Trust Me, then, for, 'I am your God,'
so I cannot forsake you. 'Can a woman forget her sucking child, that
she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yes, she may
forget, yet will I not forget you.' 'I am Jehovah your God.' If I am
nobody else's God, I am your God, so, 'when you walk through the fire,
you shall not be burned; neither shall the flame even scorch you.'"
Now turn to the next words, " the Holy One of Israel." When David
wrote, "Bless the Lord, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless His
holy name," why did he select the holinessof God's name as the
objective of special blessing? If you sound the word a little
differently, you will see that holiness is whole-ness–and that is one
of its meanings. God is holy or whole. His holiness comprehends all His
other attributes. If there were a failure in any one of the moral
attributes of God, He would not be whole, or holy! But there is no such
failure. So, now, the whole of God–the holy guarantees to the Believer
that he shall be preserved in all perils and trials!
You are not trusting to a God that can lie, or that can break His
promise, for He is "the Holy One of Israel." You are not relying upon
One who will divorce His people whom He has espoused unto Himself, for
the Lord, the God of Israel, says that He hates putting away. You are
not trusting to One who, after all, will repent of what He has promised
and not fulfill it, for, "God is not a man, that He should lie; neither
the son of man, that He should change His mind: has He said, and shall
He not do it? Or has He spoken, and shall He not make it good?" The
holiness of God is terrible to an
unreconciled soul, but, to a heart that is reconciled to God, the
holiness of God's Nature is a pledge that every one of His promises
shall be kept and that not one jot or tittle of all that He has
guaranteed to His people shall fail to come to them. Look, then,
Believer, at the guarantees of your safety which you have in the very
Nature of your God! Whether the rivers flow about you, or the raging
sea roars in your ears, or the furnace pours forth its vehement heat,
or the prairie is on fire all around you, you are at all times safe!
Then there is a further word of assurance–"the Holy One of Israel,
your Savior." Now, to be true to His name, He must save all who trust
in Him. Why does He call Himself the Savior–and especially put in the
words, "your Savior"– if He does not save, and save you? Come,
Believer, surely it needs no words of mine to draw out the force of
this argument. If He does not save, He is not a Savior! And if He does
not save you, He is not yourSavior. But if you believe on Him, He will
redeem His word–every iota of it! As honorable businessmen meet their
bills and notes of hand when they become due, so will the honorable God
fulfill His Word and prove Himself to be the Savior of all who trust in
Him. In six troubles, He will be with you. And in seven, there shall no
evil befall you. He has promised to save you and He will save you. He
will rest in His love. He will rejoice over you with singing. "Many are
the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers Him out of them
all." That is His own Word and that Word will be kept to the very
letter. He is "your Savior."
The last assurance is, in some respects, the strongest of all–"I gave
Egypt for your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for you," by which the Lord
means, "I will surely preserve you, because I have bought you at such a
great price that I cannot afford to lose you. I have shown My valuation
of you by the price I have paid for you, so you may rest assured that I
will not suffer any harm to come to those whom I have so dearly
purchased." You remember that the Israelites were redeemed by the
Egyptians being made to suffer. You recollect how the plagues thickened
about the heads of Egypt's sons and that Ethiopia and Seba were
conquered by the Assyrian turning his forces against them instead of
against the Israelites. And, since then, it has often happened that God
has succored His saints by allowing other people to feel the force of
the sword which was turned aside from the godly. When the poor
persecuted Protestants of France or Piedmont were likely to be
destroyed, it generally happened either that the kings of Germany and
France fell out, or else that France went to war with Spain and then
the soldiers were recalled–and the poor saints had a little liberty.
God had given other nations as a ransom for them, and so He will do
again when it is necessary. He will blot whole nations off the map of
Europe, or the map of Asia, or any other part of the world, for the
sake of His people! What cares He for them in comparison with His own
chosen ones? In the olden days He set the bounds of the nations
according to the number of the children of Israel– and He will do the
same for the spiritual Israel. All the world is but peel or rind, but
His Church is the sweet fruit! All the universe is only as the shell,
but the kernel inside the shell is His own redeemed!
But, in a higher sense, God has paid a far greater price than this for
the redemption of His people–something infinitely more precious than
Egypt with all her treasures, or Ethiopia with all her gold, or Seba
with all her fragrance. Did He not give His Son to die for His people?
And if Christ redeemed me with His blood, is not my safety guaranteed,
not only against flood and flame, but against the very gates of Hell?
Think you, Beloved, that the death of Christ can be in vain? Do you
believe that He bought with His blood some who, after all, shall be
cast into Hell? I know that there is a general aspect to redemption
which brings some good things to all men–but there is also the special
aspect in it which brings all good things to some men! "Christ loved
the Church, and gave Himself for it." He has redeemed us from among
men. The good Shepherd laid down His life for His sheep. Christ said,
concerning His disciples, "I pray for them: I pray not for the world,
but for them which You have given Me."
And did He really, specially and with an eye to my salvation, lay down
His precious life as a ransom for me? And shall God, after having given
me to His Son, let me fail to come into the possession of Him who
redeemed me with His blood? I confess that I am unable to conceive of
such a thing being possible! Once redeemed with the blood of the Son of
God, who could again enslave the soul that has been thus set free? Go
where you will, redeemed one, the blood-mark is upon you and "the Lord
knows them that are His." According to the notion of some people,
redemption does not guarantee salvation to anybody–but our text
directly contradicts such a theory as that! It is becausewe are
redeemed that we shall be saved–that is the reason why there are
saints already in Heaven and why they will be there forever and ever.
Redemption is the pledge of their eternal safety. If Christ should lose
any one of His redeemed–if God should lose any one of those who were
so dearly purchased–what a terrible result it would be! Then, from the
depths of Hell, the blas-
pheming fiend would look up and cry, "Aha! Here is a soul that was
redeemed by the blood of Jesus, a soul that believed in Jesus, yet He
could not save it from destruction! When it came to the river, it was
drowned, or it was consumed by the fire. Aha! You call Yourself the
Redeemer? But You have not redeemed this one!"
Now I am going to conclude my discourse by asking one or two questions.
My dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, have you not proved, in your
experience, that what I have been saying is true? I see, before me,
some who have been through fire and through water. The whiteness of
their hair betokens that they have been pilgrims for a long while. You,
my aged Friends, have the snows of many a winter upon your brows–and
the furrows of many a care are also there. Well, what have you to say
concerning your God? Has He ever failed you? You have had many sharp
pinches, but has He ever left you in them? You have had heavy burdens
to bear, but have they broken your back? You have had stern trials, but
has your faith ever altogether failed? Brothers and Sisters, I think we
who have had any experience in the ways of God might stand up and sing
good Samuel Medley's verse–
"When trouble, like a gloomy cloud,
Has gathered thick and thundered loud,
He, near my soul has always stood,
His loving kindness, oh, how good!" Then there is another question that
I want to ask. If the Lord has dealt with you thus up till now, what
ails you that you should have any fear about the future? "Ah," you say,
"but I have not passed this way before." I know you have not, but then,
all the way you have already trodden was new to you until you came to
it–and the Lord helped you then. Why should He not help you now and
for all the future, too? "Ah, but there will be changing
circumstances!" I know there will, but there will not be changing
promises. "Ah, but I find such frequent changes in myself!" Very likely
you do, but do you find any change in the Lord? That is where your
confidence is to be placed–in the Lord–not in yourselves. Brothers
and Sisters, if you never doubt your Lord till you have just cause to
do so, you will never doubt Him at all! And if you never have any
mistrust of His goodness till He betrays your confidence in Him, you
will never mistrust Him! Is it not a base thing, on our part to get
down in the dumps so readily as we do and to fret and worry ourselves
the moment a little cloud appears in the sky? Let it not be so with us!
Let us who have believed enter into rest, as our Lord intended that we
should. We shall just as assuredly wear the crown of final victory as
we have fought and won our first battle, for the Grace that enables us
to begin the conflict will never forsake us, but will help us to
conclude the campaign, however long it may last! So let us raise our
song of holy confidence and sing it all our journey through, for,
perhaps, the sweetness of our notes of praise may be heard by others
and may draw them, also, to go on pilgrimage with us, trusting in the
Lord!
Last of all, what are some of you doing–you who never did trust in
God? Well, you say you have got on so far, somehow. I cannot make out
how you do it. If I had not a God to trust in, though I have many
earthly comforts, I should be, of all men, most miserable, but I cannot
understand how a suffering man with a large family, and small wages,
manages to live without God! I cannot comprehend how a hard-working
woman, with many children and, perhaps, a drunk for a husband, manages
even to existwithout trusting in God! Oh dear, dear, dear, dear, dear,
dear! Why, your life is not worth five minutes' purchase! I would not
like to give you even a bad farthing for it, you do seem to have such a
wretched lot.
Then, some of you business people, with all your cares and worries and
troubles–up early in the morning and working till late at night–what
is it all for? Saving a little money. For whom are you saving it? Who
will have it when you die? Somebody who will call you a fool for saving
it, very likely! What are you other people living for? "Oh, we have our
amusements!" Yes, yes, yes, I daresay, and wonderful stuff the
amusements of the world are made of nowadays! Passing along the streets
I sometimes hear one of the songs that are being sung and I cannot help
feeling that the common songs that are sung in our streets would be a
disgrace to apes if they were to sing them–they are meaningless and
absurd, if not worse than that!
People sometimes ask me, "What sort of amusements would you have us go
into?" I know they only do it for an excuse, so I answer, "You know
what you like." "Ah," says one, "but I am a Christian." Well, if you
are a Christian, you will not care for the amusements of worldlings,
you will count them as unclean and not fit for you. I always say, "Let
the dogs have their biscuits and the cats their meat, and the hogs
their slop–and let the worldling have his amusement–I
don't want to rob him of it. It really is such poor, poor stuff that
they must be poor, poor creatures who can make themselves happy on it."
A bag of wind–that is all the world's amusement is!
When I hear how fashionable people spend an evening and go away saying
how delighted they were, I think they must have been absent when brains
were being distributed, or else they would say, "Dear me, this is a
wretched way of wasting time! I cannot endure it." You have not
anything, O you Worldlings, even you who dwell in palaces and ride in
chariots! You who have great riches, you who have broad acres–you have
not anything fit to feed a soul upon! It is all wind, chaff, husks such
as the poor prodigal could not fill his belly with, yet you eat it. How
is that? I do not understand you. I go back to what I said before. If I
had all that my heart could wish for–I have that already, for I do not
wish for anything more than I have in this world–but if I had all that
my heart could wish for, supposing that it took to ambition and
covetousness, yet should I be wretched without my God! I cannot live
without Him! I would be like Noah's dove when it was flying over the
wild waste of waters–I could not find a place where I could rest if I
were to try to do so! I must go back to my Noah, to my Ark–there is no
other place of rest for me.
Poor Soul, how is it that you think there is rest for you anywhere but
in Christ? Come back, you with the weary wings, come back to God! Come
back, you with the weary heart, come back to your Savior's bosom!
May God bless you all, for Christ's sake! Amen.