(Marginal reading).
The means used for the restoration of Hezekiah's body to health was a lump of figs laid as a plaster upon the boil, but the means used for the renewal of his soul from the disease of despondency was something equally effectual and far sweeter--what if I say that the Lord laid to the sore of Hezekiah's heart some of the leaves of the Tree of Life which are for the healing of the nations? The fact is that Hezekiah, under such a mass of troubles, had sunk very low in doubts, fears and dark forebodings until he almost despaired and, therefore, the Lord shed abroad in his heart a sense of Divine love-- deep, true and mighty--and as Hezekiah's body recovered, so Hezekiah's spirits also rose. And instead of chattering like a crane, he began to sing the praises of the Host High. The remedy for his soul's sickness was love. His heart was fetched up from the grave of its despair by love--love was the hand of power that drew him up and love the cords by which he was lifted.
Now, what was true of Hezekiah with regard to his sickness and depression is true in the fullest sense of all Believers. See, dear Brethren, where we lay by nature--in the grave of death. Yes, and more--in the pit of corruption. We were so destroyed by sin that we were like men who had rotted in a pit and were corrupt, for sin is a foul putrefaction of our nature and it has worked in us to the most dreadful degree. We are like the slain upon the battlefield, rotting with foul decay--obnoxious to God, corrupt and abominable. At this present moment, by Sovereign Grace, those of us who have believed in Jesus have been brought up out of the horrible pit. Our standing, now, is a blessed one, for our feet are upon the Rock of Ages--immutable promises and eternal purposes are now the bases of our confidence.
Now shall our head be lifted up above our enemies round about us and, therefore, with joy will we offer in His tabernacle sacrifices of joy! We will sing, yes, we will sing praises unto the Lord! It is hardly necessary that I remind you that it was the love of God which moved Him to have compassion upon us when we were in the pit of corruption. The Lord loved us even when we were in that loathsome condition. This is a deep mystery of love. Well does the Apostle speak of "His great love wherewith He loved us even when we were dead in trespasses and sins." To love us when there was no good in us, but every evil in us--to love us when we were unlovable and even hateful--this is not after the manner of man, but is worthy of the infinite heart of God.
Now we know that this ancient, primeval love which had no cause except itself, devised the way of lifting us up out of the pit. We were to be brought up by Substitution, by the sacrifice of Another in our place. We were to be brought up by the operations of the Divine energy--that same power which brought our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead was to bring us up from our death in sin. Love planned this admirable method of mercy and we are equally ready to admit, this morning, and to exult as we admit it, that it was love which supplied all the provisions necessary for carrying out the plan. Love brought the Savior to the Cross. Love made Him bear our sins in His own body on the tree. Love led Him to give up His precious life on our behalf and to become a hostage in the tomb. Love sent the Holy Spirit to quicken us, to illuminate us, to strengthen us and to dwell in us forever. Love found the materials for our redemption and love applied the redemption when it was completed. Love led us to the Savior's Cross. Love regenerated us. Love has supported us till this day and will keep us to the end.
I shall not, however, call your attention to this great Truth of God, but to one of the same order. The text sets forth a charming fact which I desire to insist upon as God's Spirit shall help me. It is this--not merely that love desired our salvation, planned it, provided it, and so on--but that the instrument which love has used has been love. In order to get us out of the pit we have not been drawn out of it by power, nor driven out of it by terror, but we have been loved out of it. "You have loved my soul out of the pit of corruption." The other Sunday morning [DIVINE LOVE AND ITS GIFTS
NO. 1096] I spoke to you upon our loving souls into Christ and tried to show in a few sentences the power of love to lead sinners to Jesus. Now that is what the text means--that God's love has loved us out of the pit of corruption--it has been the energetic means which has brought the saved ones to be what they are.
This subject has carried my own soul away in my private contemplations, but I fear I cannot set it forth to you as I would wish. I am like the child which said to its mother, "Mother, I will bring the sea to you," and the little one went down to the shore and filled its little palm with the water, but before it reached its mother it had spilt ten times as much as it had carried and if it had carried all it had taken up, it would only have brought a few drops and left behind it the great and wide sea altogether undiminished. I am hopeless of being able to convey to your souls a tenth of what I feel! I could have danced with David before the ark while I was drinking the new wine out of the golden cup of the text. I am hopeless of transferring my joy to you and if I could succeed in it, I should have accomplished little compared with the glory of the text before me.
I pray that many of you may, however, get enough out of this sermon to make you sing--
"In the heavenly Lamb Thrice happy I am, And my heart it does dance At the sound of His name."
May the Spirit of God love you, this morning, into a sense of the Savior's love--love you into a ravishing enjoyment of the love of God. We shall consider, first of all, that we were loved into an entrance into Grace. Secondly, we are loved into advance in Grace and thirdly we shall be loved from Grace into Glory.
I. We were, in the beginning, LOVED INTO GRACE. What brought us to be converted men and women? We know it was the power of the Holy Spirit, but of that we shall not now speak. Our question is--what instrumentality did the Spirit use? The answer is, in most cases--in mine, certainly, and I do not doubt in the case of you all, in some degree-- love was the constraining power. The love of Christ to sinners was the topic which arrested our solemn attention to the Gospel. That Jesus Christ should die, "the Just for the unjust, to bring us to God," is a thought which commands attention and compels men to hear. As the ancient mariner laid hold upon the wedding guest and held him spell-bound by his strange story, so have myriads of men been held fast by the wondrous news of the love of God in Christ Jesus.
If we desire attention from sinners we must preach Christ to them--all else will be flat and mindless compared with Christ Crucified. The first missionaries to Greenland thought that the natives were too debased to understand at once the doctrine of Atonement. Therefore they began to tell them of the existence of a God and so on. The effect produced stale information, but when translating the chapter of John in which the passage occurs, "God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life," a Greenlander said, "Is that true?" When the missionary affirmed that it was, "Why then," said he, "did you not tell us that at first, for that is good news, indeed!"
That there is a God the heavens are telling us! That God will punish injustice and wrong, conscience affirms. The visible creation and the inner consciousness of man sufficiently declare that there is a God and that He is just. But that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them--this is a novelty, a thing which never was spelt out yet by the wisdom of human nature! And so, if attention is to be arrested, it must be through the news, the blessed news, of redeeming love! It was so with many of us. We were loved out of indifference, loved into attentive hearing--Love won our ears to her sweet tale.
Having come to listen with interest, we were, nevertheless, but little anxious to become doers of the Word of God. To be saved did not seem to us to be very important. But when we heard, again and again, from our minister and from our Bibles of the "great love wherewith He loved us," we began to feel awakened. Love touched our hearts as well as our ears! When the sun visits the flowers which have hid themselves away in the cold earth to escape from hungry winter, he begins to call them out of their hiding places by shining upon them. And then by-and-by they say unto themselves, "Let us break our bands of sleep! Let us lift up the mold which covers us and let us peep forth that we may see the blessed sun, for full surely he is calling us."
Even so, when the warm beams of Love began to fall upon us in the form of invitations, expostulations, entreaties, and instructions, we felt their sweet influence and at last we said, "We will arise and seek Him who loves our souls, if haply we may be saved by Him." The Lord loved us out of our neglect of salvation! Our face was set towards sin and our back was towards Him, but He loved us right round till we could not help turning our faces towards Jesus and our backs upon our sins. Do you remember, Brothers and Sisters, when you began to seek the Lord? Love had brought you as far as that, but you were hampered with the idea that it was of no use to hope for mercy--doubt hung like a head shroud upon you--you sat in the region of the shadow of death and you would have remained there had you not been loved into faith!
You were bid to believe in Jesus--it was the Gospel's standing message--"Believe and you shall be saved." But how did you come to believe, my Brother? I know your answer will be, "He loved me into faith." As for myself I saw the great Lover of men hanging on a tree in agony and blood--they told me it was love to miserable sinners, love to those who hated Him, love to His murderers which made Him bleed--and as I understood that it was God who hung there to die a felon's death for unworthy men--I know not how it was, my Brothers and Sisters, but all of a sudden I felt that I could not help believing! Love compelled me to believe!
Unbelief in the presence of a dying Savior, if that dying Savior's love is really understood, must surely be impossible. He, the Lord of Heaven, without whom was not anything made that is made, humbling Himself to become a Servant unto God and man--and then laying down His life a Substitute for the ungodly--and all out of love! What a miracle is here! Who can disbelieve in the presence of such love? Savior, we must believe You! It is inevitable that we do so! Your love has loved us into faith and at the foot of the Cross we hope and trust in You. At the time when faith came into our hearts, there came with it the sister Grace which always attends it, namely, repentance.
Beloved, you must remember, I think, the days of your hardness of heart. Some of us were very hard--adamant itself is wax compared with what our nature was. A mother's tears could not melt us, nor a father's careful anxiety. How could we repent of sin? How could a millstone feel, or a flint weep? Why, when we heard the Gospel say to us, "Repent, and be converted," that command might as well have been spoken to dry bones or to marble statues! We could not repent. We were in love with our sins! We thought them sweet--we could not turn from them. But, oh, do you remember when you did repent? Can you tell how it was brought about?
I remember when my soul was like the rock in Horeb, for it gushed with living streams. Yet it was not because Moses' rod had struck it, but because Christ's voice of love spoke to it and the rock dissolved into floods at once! See the summer's sun assail and vanquish the iceberg which has floated from its northern home! Winter's rudest storms could not dissolve the monstrous mountain of ice, nor could a thousand hurricanes and storms break it in pieces--but the sun shot a strange tremor through its heart as soon as he smiled on it and every beam that fell from the fair orb of day shot through it like a dart, till at last, yielding to the mysterious glow, the iceberg lost its hardness of heart, bowed itself from its chilly loftiness, fell into the warm gulf stream and was no more to be found!
Was it not so with you when the eyes of Jesus darted love into your heart? How irresistible were His blissful arrows! How deadly to your sins! How mortal to your pride! You were soon vanquished! Well does John Newton describe our case in his hymn--
"Lord, You have won, at length I yield. My heart, by mighty trace compelled, Surrenders all to You. Against Your terrors long I strove But who can stand against Your love? Love conquered even me! If You had bid Your thunders roll, And lightning flash, to blast my soul, I still had stubborn been. But mercy has my heart subdued, A bleeding Savior I have viewed, And now I hate my sin.'
Truly we were loved into repentance! There were other agents used, of course. The Law thundered and conscience smote us, but still the master weapon in all the armory of God against our unregenerate hearts was love. We admit that it is more than a match for us--we confess that we are conquered by its might! The Lord has loved our souls out of the pit of corruption into that state of salvation in which we are now found!
II. Secondly, let us consider that we have been LOVED INTO GROWTH IN GRACE. The great motive power urging us onward has always been the same love of God. Let us turn aside for a few minutes to meditate upon the love of God to us. Our hearts will burn within us while we think upon it. It is quite certain, my dear Brethren, that you who believe in Jesus are personally the objects of the love of the Triune Jehovah. You are loved as much as you love your children, or as the bridegroom loves his bride--no, those are very feeble images--for you are loved by God infinitely. The heart of God never does anything weakly--His love is strong and powerful, for it is the affection of an Omnipotent Spirit.
Remember the words of the Lord Jesus--"As the Father has loved Me even so have I loved you." Do you know how much the Father loves His Son? Can you form any conception? Are you not baffled in the attempt? "Even so," says Jesus, "have I loved you." There is another text from which I never expect to preach till I get to Heaven, and I would like to preach from it there if a pulpit might be had. It is this--"That the love wherewith you have loved Me may be in them and I in them." O, you are not dealing with trifles when you are dealing with the love of God to you! It is not a spare corner of the heart of God that He gives to you--as you may give a little love to the poor Arabs in the street or the criminals in the jails--the great, inconceivably vast heart of God belongs as much to every Christian as if there were not another being in the world for God to love! Even as Jehovah loves His Only-Begotten, so does He love each one of His children.
Remember, too, for this is sweet to think of, the Lord always did love you. It is no novelty for God to love His people. He loved you before you were born--in the glass of His purposes He saw you--in His book all your members were written, which in continuance were fashioned when as yet there were none of them. Is it not written, "The Lord has appeared of old unto me, saying, Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love"? Divine love had no beginning! Yon stars are babes whose eyes but yesterday were opened to the light and yonder mountains are infants newly born! But as for God's love, it is coeval with His own Existence and the objects of it are always the same.
Beloved, the love of God to you has never changed! He could not love you more. He will not love you less. The Lord's love wild never vary. O, believe it, my Brothers and Sisters, it is still the same! Whatever may happen to you, or through whatever trials you may pass, with the same love while He has loved you He will love you world without end! In life, in death and in eternity you are the beloved of the Lord who changes not! That same love which had no beginning shall never know an end! If it were in my power only to make my Brethren realize the fact that they are thus loved, it would elevate them, comfort them and set them all in a blaze with love to God! Think it over, and then say, each one to himself, "Jehovah, the Eternal, Self-Existent One loves me. Jesus, the King Eternal, Immortal, Invisible, The Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace loves me! The Holy Spirit, The Wonderworker, The Comforter, The Illuminator loves me! What bliss is this!" O, you would not need a sermon if you realized this--you would far rather need a place to weep and to sing, and mix tears and songs together as you bathed in unspeakable delight!
Having thus brought the love of God to your remembrance, I want to come back to the text and consider, again, that a sense of this love has up to now been the cause of all our advances in the Divine life, for first, after we were saved, we were still in the pit of corruption in the sense that our natural depravity struggled with us for the mastery. It would have made us captives to the love of sin if Divine Grace had not stepped in. Our hearts were tempted by vanity and wantonness and the pleasures of sin, like Sirens, tried to fascinate us to our sure destruction. Have you never been in such a condition as a Christian that you were compelled to doubt whether you were a Christian at all because of the seething and raging of your innate depravity?
It may be you have never looked, yet, into the crater of that volcano of sin which, believe me, is not extinct in any one of us--but if you have ever peered into its horrid depths and seen the blackness, and heard the boiling up of murders, envy, and lusts, you have said--"O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me?" Now, I ask you, how have you, up to now, escaped from the love of sin and its enchantments? I think I can tell you. God has loved you out of them--loved you right away from sin's beauties and temptations! When the dear love of God comes into the soul, the man has no more heart for sin--"Sin! How can I love you? I cannot endure you, you hateful thing! My God, I want perfection! I pine after holiness now that I know that I am Your child, Your blood-bought one, a member of the body of Your dear Son, as dear to You as He is--I feel that I hate every false way. Away sins! I cry revenge against you! I would gladly slaughter you all!"--
"When the wounds of Christ exploring Sin does like itself appear."
Sin becomes black and hideous and abhorred in proportion as Jesus becomes lovely in our eyes. If you love sin, it is because you do not feel the love of God, for when that love fills your soul you must hate sin. Thus the Lord loves you out of that love to sin. Again, we get into the pit of corruption through the tendency of our souls to go after idols. Who among us has not been tempted to idolatry? It may be the partner of our bosom or a dear child has engrossed our hearts. Sometimes our life's ambition or the pursuit of our business has almost become our God. Our feet have almost gone--we have set up Dagon or Mammon in our heart. It is not easy to live in this world--especially to enjoy prosperity--and yet be clear from worshipping idols. How have you and I been saved from idols? Not always by having them broken--that is a remedy which God is slow to use though He will use it if we are obstinate.
The most effectual, as well as the most delicious medicine to cure idolatry is to have the love of God shed abroad in the heart by Jesus Christ! Get a sight of the Glory of God in the face of Christ and then you will say--
"Farewell all you mean creatures For in Him is every store. Wealth, or friends, or darling beauty, Shall not draw me any more. In my Savior I have found a glorious whole." "He is the chief among ten thousand, and the altogether lovely." We cannot see the stars when the sun is shining. Our dear ones are dear still, but Christ is far dearer. I am not afraid for you, dear Brothers, that you will get worldly if you know the love of Christ which passes knowledge. I am not afraid for you, dear Sister, that the marriage bond will lead you away from holiness or that your maternal love will ever rival your love to Jesus if you know how sweet and dear He is. Relationships are precious things, but they are nothing compared with Him! We love them, but as compared with Him we could hate father and mother, and sister and brother for His name's sake.
When a certain martyr was about to be burned, they brought out his wife and his 11 little children and bade them kneel in one long row to ask their father, for their sakes, to consent to deny the faith and live. But as he kissed them one by one and lingered longest over the dear mother of them all, he said, "I would do anything for your sakes, my dear Ones, that I might live with you. But since it is for Christ, my Lord's sake, I must tear myself away even from you." When Jesus is in the soul, the idols leave their thrones. He loves us out of the pit of idolatry! There is another pit of corruption into which children of God sometimes fall, namely, that of sluggishness. We do not always feel equally alive towards the Lord and Divine things. Indifference is very apt to steal over us.
There is a portion of the road to Heaven which John Bunyan describes as the Enchanted Ground, where a tendency to sleep is very strong upon all pilgrims. Some pilgrims of my acquaintance are pretty constantly traversing that part of the road and are never quite awake. Very few Christians are quickened into diligence and fervor by the scourge! I do a little bit of whipping, sometimes, and I think I do right, for my Master would not clear me if I suffered Believers to sleep without waking them. But I am certain that the only effectual cure for a slumbering Christian is to let him have the love of Christ shed abroad in his heart--and here I speak by experience--for I have found that it is the only thing which can quicken me. I think over my duties, but I am none the more in love with them. I look over my responsibilities, but I am scarcely the more impressed by them. But when I feel that my Lord has chosen me from before the foundation of the world, loved me and given Himself for me, then am I awakened!
When I have a sight of His thorn-crowned brow. When I see His majesty of misery. When He shows me His hands and feet and side, and says, "I have done all this for you and I am prepared to do yet more, for you shall be with Me where I am, that you may share My Glory"--then I need neither scourge nor spur to awake me--then for the love I bear His name my heart becomes like the chariots of Amminadib, swift in duty, with axles red hot with fervor! Then my soul would fly like the chariot of God when He rides on the wings of the wind! Have you not felt it? What blessed preaching it is when the heart glows with a sense of love! What happy Sunday school teaching it is when you know that Jesus loved you! What a delightful thing it is to make sacrifices, to give your substance, to bear and to suffer if once you feel the love of Christ burning within your soul!
The same is true of that abominable pit of selfishness, self-esteem, pride and self-seeking into which our feet so easily glide. Beloved, we are always something when Christ is nothing. We are always nothing when Christ is All-in-All to us.
We cannot do Christ's work when our base hearts are puffed up with conceit! But when we once see His beauty, then we feel that the laces of His shoes we are not worthy to unloose. We know right well that we have no business to be proud nor to shirk hard work and seek our own ease. We know that and we condemn ourselves for this wrong--but we go on with it till the moment the love of God enters the soul--and then we are rid of it! Then we do, indeed, hate ourselves for ever having imagined that anything that could be done for Christ was difficult.
I am ashamed to be speaking to you coolly on a theme which is like fire within my own bones. I pray the Master, however, to make it like fire in your souls, also. The love of Christ is the very best cure for selfishness. And it is equally a cure for despondency and unbelief. What a pit of corruption unbelief is--a pit in which we hear strange noises of terrors to come, while unseen fears as to the present rush to and fro with horrible sounds. "I cannot believe, I cannot trust," says the man, but when God's love is shed abroad in his heart it is easy enough to believe. He asks himself, "How can I distrust? I know what Jesus did for me upon the Cross--how can I doubt? The Lord cannot be unkind to me in Providence, for it is impossible that He can forsake those whose names are engraved upon the palms of His hands."
God does not chide His people out of their unbelief, but loves them out of it! He indulges them with such sweet festivals in the banqueting house of communion--He does so sweetly stay them with flagons and comfort them with apples that they soon shake off the sickness of unbelief. Many a child of God can bear witness that the Lord has loved him out of his impatience. When he has been full of pain he has thought that God dealt harshly with him--but when Love has told him that all things work together for his good, he has endured pain with cheerfulness and gloried in his infirmities! In one word, are any of you suffering today under any spiritual malady? Is any sin too strong for you? Does any virtue appear to be so high that you cannot attain to it?
Behold I will be a guide to you this morning and point you out a path by which you may escape from your sin and rise to the greatest heights of Grace! Do you see that narrow line, that blessed pathway? It is a path which Love has made. Follow it and you shall come where you should be. Not there, not there where Moses says you go! Not there, not there where fear says if you do not you will be destroyed! Not there where conscience alarms and terrifies! But here where Jesus shows Himself to you and says, "I am married to you. You are My spouse, you are all My own. I love you better than I love Myself, for I did not spare Myself--but I died for you. I will love you whatever your infirmity and sin may be. I will love you till I have washed you and made you clean. And then I will present you to Myself without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing. I am drawing you, but you do not come as you should. However, I will still draw you till I have drawn you away from yourself, your sin and your folly. I will draw you, and draw you, and draw you till I draw you up to My right hand and there you shall be with Me forever!"
Beloved, you can do anything when you feel this! You can do nothing if you do not feel it. Lose your sense of Jesus' love and the power of your religion is gone. You have stolen the life if you have taken away the love. Oh, believe it! Know it! Pray for it! Spirit of God, make them feel it and anything shall be possible, whether of sin slain or duty worked! I have often felt myself to be a mere expanse of foulness, like the mudflats by the seashore when the tide is out. As far as the eye can see is a continent of mud, with black rocks, rotting seaweed, pieces of wreck, creeping things innumerable and such foul matters as the eye might never wish to see again. What is to be done with this dismal region? Here lie the fisher boats embedded in the mud, what shall float them? It would be impossible to drag them down to the sea--must they lie there and decay? What is to be done with this mud and weed?
Wait and lo, at the appointed time, the sea advances from its bed! Ripple by ripple, wave by wave it rises, spreading out itself like a molten looking glass, where just now all was foul. And lo, yonder ships are lifted--they walk the waters like things of life--while all that rotted in the noonday sun is forgotten and the waves follow each other with continuous flashes of silver sheen! O Lord, You are that sea of love--Your mercies are Your waves of lovingkindness! Let them come up and flood my soul! With infinite power of love, arise and cover all my nature. I hope the Lord will deal so with all of you, if not by means of this sermon, yet by some other agency. Never rest until you enjoy this love, and when you do enjoy it, keep it.
If you find my Beloved, hold Him and do not let Him go till you bring Him into His mother's house among His brethren. When it is well with you, I pray you speak for me to the King, that He would keep me, His servant, for the sake of His people to whom I minister, living ever in the light of His countenance, for there is strength and there is power for ministry and everything else beside.
III. That love which loved us out of nature into Grace has yet another work to do. The Lord will LOVE US OUT OF GRACE INTO GLORY. I know what troubles you in your quiet moments. You are thinking about the passage of that "narrow stream of death," as we call it in our hymn. You are advanced in years and you know that death must come very soon. The thought of death depresses you and you need not be surprised that it should, for God has planted a Law of self-preservation in us all which makes us love life. Nature shudders at the grave, but whenever your nature starts back from dying, think of your faithful God and be assured that He will love you through death. You shall be carried through it by the force of love.
One of the points about death which alarms you is this--you dread pain. Now, remember there is no pain in death--the pain is in life--when a man dies there is an end of life's pain! Death is the pain killer, not the pain maker! Do you fear the pains associated with death? Have you not already endured pain and been made to forget it through being divinely sustained by love? The love of God, I do avow it, has often acted as a Sovereign remedy for anguish. The bitter has been forgotten in the sweetness of fellowship with God. Who says that there is no God, no Christ, no Heaven? We have seen them all! Our eyes have seen them--not these poor optics which were only meant to spy out a few things in this dark world--but our inner eyes which see best in the blessed sunlight of eternity! With those eyes we have seen God and the enjoyment of the ravishing vision has subdued all the feebleness of the flesh and removed the pangs of the body.
Now Christian, that is what God will do with you when you come to die--He will bear you up on eagles' wings, so that you will say with one of the old saints, "Is this dying? Why it is worth while to live only to enjoy the pleasure of such a death as this," and yet he was not free from pain--he was loved above pain. But you say, "My trouble is about parting from dear friends." You think it will be a very sharp pinch to be separated from the wife and from your friends. So it would be--but when Jesus shall stand at your bedside and reveal Himself in a more apparent manner than He has ever done before--you will turn away from wife and children and friends and say, "O Lord, let me be with You where You are, for my soul is taken up with You rather than with these."
You had a little medicine to give your boy the other night and it had a bad flavor, but you mixed it with some sweet confection and he never tasted the bitter. Thus the pangs of separation will be mixed up with the sweetness of seeing Christ, so that you will not mourn. That is a blessed passage, "Death is swallowed up in victory," as though it were dropped like one black, cruel drop into the cup and then Victory was poured in as generous wine--and you drank the bitter drop right up before you knew it! Saints shall not know that they die, but only that they have gained the victory! "O, but I am afraid of death, itself," says one, "it is not parting with friends, or the pain, but I dread death, itself." O, Soul, when Jesus comes to meet you, you will know nothing at all about death. He will love you into Heaven! In a moment He will embrace you and you shall be with Him!
Those dear lips which are like lilies dropping sweet smelling myrrh shall kiss you away and you will be among the songs of angels in an instant! You shall not see death--you shall only see your Master! There shall be no skeleton with a scythe to cut you down--but a dear hand of love to gather you and place you in the Father's bosom--
"One gentle sigh, the fetter breaks, We scarce can say he's gone, Before the ransomed spirit takes Its mansion near the throne."
The Rabbis say that God took Moses' soul away with a kiss. So it was I doubt not, for so He does with all His saints--He kisses them into Heaven. "You have loved my soul out of the pit of corruption." Now, when you and I stand in Heaven, with these poor heads enriched with the crown and waving the palm branch in these hands, what bliss will be ours! Here, let us stand upon this crystal rock a moment and gaze adown the precipice of light. There, lean over, my Brother spirit, and look steadily down.
See where stars and suns are glistering like glow-worms far below? How small their grandeur compared with ours in these sublime abodes! Look further down and peer into that awful darkness, that profound abyss, across which flash the flames of infinite wrath, kindling evermore afresh the fires of punishment. Oh, as we stand upon these heavenly heights and gaze upon the Eternal without fear--and then see far below us the outer darkness and the unquenchable fire, shall we not sing aloud unto Him who has "loved our soul from the pit of corruption"? Yes, we will sing louder and louder and louder and louder, and no cherubim or seraphim shall ever excel us in the fullness of our grateful praise! Blessing and honor and glory and power be unto Him whose name is Love, who has poured forth all His love upon us, His chosen, and saved us from the abyss of woe!
To His name be praise forever and ever! O, Sirs, will you all know this love? Will you all sing of it? Will you all be able to say, "He loved me out of the pit of corruption"? You may say it--you shall say it if you believe in Jesus! Amen.
Motives for Steadfastness
A Sermon
(No. 1111)
Delivered on Lord's Day Morning, May 11, 1873, by
C.H. SPURGEON,
At the [1]Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington
"Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord."— 1 Corinthians 15:58.
THE apostle had been putting forth all his strength to prove the doctrine of the resurrection, yet he was not diverted from his habitual custom of making practical use of the doctrine which he established. He proves his point, and then he goes on to his "therefore," which is always an inference of godliness. He is the great master of doctrine: if you want the Christian creed elaborated, and its details laid out in order, you must turn to the epistles of Paul; but at the same time he is always a practical teacher. Paul was not like those who hew down trees and square them by rule and system, but forget to build the house therewith. True, he lifteth up a goodly axe upon the thick trees, but he always makes use of that which he hews down, he lays the beams of his chambers, and forgets not the carved work thereof. He brings to light the great stones of truth, and cuts them out of the live rock of mystery; but he is not content with being a mere quarryman, he labors to be a wise master builder, and with the stones of truth to erect the temple of Christian holiness. If I shift the figure I may say that our apostle does not grope among the lower strata of truth, hunting out the deep things and spending all his force upon them, but he ploughs the rich upper soil, he sows, he reaps, he gathers in a harvest, and feeds many. Thus should the practical ever flow from the doctrinal like wine from the clusters of the grape. The Puritans were wont to call the end of the sermon, in which they enforced the practical lessons, the "improvement" of the subject; and, truly, the apostle Paul was a master in the way of "improvement." Hence in this present chapter, though he has been dealing with the fact of resurrection, and arguing with all his might in defense of it, he cannot close till he has said, "Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord."
My brethren, this is a lesson for us; let us never reckon that we have learned a doctrine till we have seen its bearing upon our lives. Whatever we discover in God's word, let us pray the Holy Spirit to make us feel the sanctifying influence of it. You know not a man because you recognize his features, you must also know his spirit, and so the mere acquaintance with the letter of truth is of small account—you must feel its influence and know its tendency. There are some brethren who are so enamored of doctrine that no preacher will content them unless he gives them over and over again clear statements of certain favourite truths: but the moment you come to speak of practice they fight shy of it at once, and either denounce the preacher as being legal, or they grow weary of that which they dare not contradict. Let it never be so with us. Let us follow up truth to its practical "therefore." Let us love the practice of holiness as much as the belief of the truth; and, though we desire to know, let us take care when we know that we act according to the knowledge, for if we do not our knowledge itself will become mischievous to us, will involve us in responsibilities, but will bring to us no effectual blessing. Let everyone here who knoweth aught, now pray God to teach him float he would have him to do, as the consequence of that knowledge.
This morning our subject will be the practical outflow of the resurrection, the great inference which should be drawn from the fact that death is swallowed up in victory. There should be fine flour from the grinding of such choice wheat.
The text has in it two things: first, it mentions two great points of Christian character—"stedfast, unmoveable," and "always abounding in the work of the Lord;" and, secondly, it gives us a grand motive for the cultivation of these two characteristics—inasmuch as the doctrine of the resurrection being true, "ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord."
I. First, then, let us consider THE TWO GREAT POINTS OF CHRISTIAN CHARACTER here set before us.
1. The first one is "be ye stedfast, unmoveable." Two things are wanted in a good soldier, steadiness under fire, and enthusiasm during a charge. The first is the more essential in most battles, for victory often depends upon the power of endurance which makes a battalion of men into a wall of brass. We want the dashing courage which can carry a position by storm—that will be used up in the second characteristic—"always abounding in the work of the Lord;" but in the commencement of the attack, and at critical points all through the campaign, the most essential virtue for victory is for a soldier to know how to keep his place, and "having done all to stand."
The apostle has given us two words descriptive of godly firmness, and we may be sure that as Holy Scripture never uses a superfluity of words, each word has a distinct meaning. "Stedfast" alone would not have sufficed, but "unmoveable" must be added. Let us look at the word "stedfast" first. Beloved, be ye stedfast. By this the apostle means, first, be ye stedfast in the doctrines of the gospel. Know what you know, and, knowing it cling to it. Hold fast the form of sound doctrine. Do not be as some are, of doubtful mind, who know nothing, and even dare to say that nothing can be known. To such the highest wisdom is to suspect the truth of everything they once knew, and to hang in doubt as to whether there are any fundamentals at all. I should like an answer from the Broad Church divines to one short and plain question. What truth is so certain and important as to justify a man in sacrificing his life to maintain it? Is there any doctrine for which a wise man should yield his body to be burned? According to all that I can understand of modern liberalism, religion is a mere matter of opinion, and no opinion is of sufficient importance to be worth contending for. The martyrs might have saved themselves a world of loss and pain if they had been of this school, and the Reformers might have spared the world all this din about Popery and Protestantism. I deplore the spread of this infidel spirit, it will eat as doth a canker. Where is the strength of a church when its faith is held in such low esteem? Where is conscience? Where is love of truth? Where soon will be common honesty? In these days with some men, in religious matters, black is white, and all things are whichever color may happen to be in your own eye, the color being nowhere but in your eye, theology being only a set of opinions, a bundle of views and persuasions. The Bible to these gentry is a nose of wax which everybody may shape just as he pleases. Beloved, beware of falling into this state of mind; for if you do so I boldly assert that you are not Christian at all, for the Spirit which dwells in believers hates falsehood, and clings firmly to the truth. Our great Lord and Master taught mankind certain great truths plainly and definitely, stamping them with his "Verily, verily;" and as to the marrow of them he did not hesitate to say, "He that believeth shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned;" a sentence very abhorrent to modern charity, but infallible nevertheless. Jesus never gave countenance to the baseborn charity which teaches that it is no injury to a man's nature to believe a lie. Beloved, be firm, be stedfast, be positive. There are certain things which are true; find them out, grapple them to you as with hooks of steel. Buy the truth at any price and sell it at no price.
Be ye stedfast also in the sense of not being changeable. Some have one creed to-day and another creed to-morrow, variable as a lady's fashions. Indeed, we once heard a notable divine assert that he had to alter his creed every week, he was unable to tell on Monday what he would believe on Wednesday, for so much fresh light broke in upon his receptive intellect. There are crowds of persons nowadays of that kind described by Mr. Whitfield when he said you might as well try to measure the moon for a suit of clothes as to tell what they believed. Ever learning but never coming to a knowledge of the truth. Shifting as sandbanks are their teachings and as full of danger. The apostle says to us, "Be ye stedfast." Having learned the truth hold it, grow into it, let the roots of your soul penetrate into its center and drink up the nourishment which lies therein, but do not be for ever transplanting yourselves from soil to soil. How can a tree grow when perpetually shifted? How can a soul make progress if it is evermore changing its course? Do not sow in Beersheba and then rush off to reap in Dan. Jesus Christ is not yea and nay; he is not to-day one thing and tomorrow another, but the "same to-day, yesterday, and for ever." True religion is not a series of guesses at truth, but "we speak what we do know, and testify what we have seen." That which your experience has proved to you, that which you have clearly seen to be the word of God, that which the Spirit beareth witness to in your consciousness, that hold you with iron grasp. Skin for skin, yea, all that a man has, will he give for his life, and to us the holding of the truth is essential to our life. The Holy Ghost has given his unction unto the people of God, and they know the truth, and moreover they know that no lie is of the truth. Were it not for this anointing the very elect would have been deceived in this age of falsehood. Brethren, be ye stedfast.
But the apostle meant much more, he intended to urge us to be stedfast in character. Right in the middle of the chapter upon the resurrection he speaks about character. He shows that a change of view upon the doctrine of the resurrection would legitimately lead to a change of action; for if the dead rise not, then it is clearly wisdom to say, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die:" but inasmuch as the resurrection doctrine is true, he urges us to keep to that holy living which is the natural inference from belief in eternal life and the judgment to come. As ye have looked to the recompense of the reward hereafter, and have sought to order your conversation by a sense of the coming judgment, so do ye still, and be ye stedfast. Alas, we might preach tearful discourses to many Christians upon stedfastness of behavior, for they have started aside as a deceitful bow. There was a time when their integrity was unquestioned, but now they have learned the ways of a faithless world; truth was on their lip, but now they have learned to flatter. They have lost the pure speech of the New Jerusalem, and speak in the Babylonian tongue. How many professors were once exceeding zealous, but are now careless! the fire of their love burns dimly, its coal is all but quenched. Prayer was their delight, but now it wearies them. The praises of God were perpetually in their mouth, but now they forget their Benefactor. They labored abundantly in the Redeemer's service, but now they can scarce be stirred out of their luxurious indolence. Beloved, if God has sanctified you by his Spirit, be ye stedfast in character. Suffer not your divinely-wrought sanctity to be stained. Be ye not sometimes watchful, but be ye always so, by the help of the good Spirit. Whereunto ye have attained in the things of God, walk by that rule still. Be ye not corrupted by evil communications. Make your private and public life of a piece. Let not the worldling peep into your house and discover that your godliness is an article intended for foreign consumption only. Be ye such that if ye be watched anywhere, and at any time, your sincerity will be manifested. O for consistency among professors! Its absence is the weakness of the church, and its restoration will bring to us unnumbered blessings.
In addition to being stedfast in doctrine and character, we need to be exhorted to stedfastness in attainments. O brethren, if we were now what we sometimes have been, how ripe for glory should we be! If we could but keep the ground which we conquer, how soon would all Canaan be ours! But is not Christian life with a great many very like the condition of the sea? The sea advances, it gains gradually upon the beach—you would think it was about to inundate the land; but after it has reached its highest point it retires, and so it spends its force in perpetual ebb and flow. Are not ebb-and-flow Christians common as sea-shells? Life to them is the unprogressive change of advance and recede: to-day all earnest, to-morrow all indifferent; to-day generous, to-morrow mean; to-day filled with the fullness of God, to-morrow naked, and poor, and miserable. What they build with one hand they pull down with the other. Sad that it should be so. I must confess I find it far easier to climb the greatest heights of grace, and especially of communion, than to maintain the elevation. For a flight now and then our wings are sufficient; we mount, we soar, we rise into the spiritual regions, and we exult as we rise; but our pinion droops, we grow weary of the heights, and we descend to earth like stones which have been thrown into the air. Alas! that it should be so. Be ye stedfast. When ye climb ask for grace to keep there; when your wing has borne you up ask that there you may be poised till the Lord shall call you to your nest in heaven. Is your faith strong? Why should it decline again? Is your hope vivid? Why should that bright eye of yours grow dim, and look no more within the golden gates? Is your love fervent? Why should it be chilled? Cannot the breath of the Eternal Spirit keep the fire at full blaze? Wherefore is it that we do run well and then are hindered? We are short-winded, we cannot watch with our Lord one hour, we grow weary and faint in our minds. Alexander could not thus have won a world if after fighting the battle of Issus he had stopped short of the Granicus: if the Macedonian hero had said, "I have done enough, I will go back to Greece and enjoy my victories," his empire had never become universal. Nor would Columbus have discovered a new world if he had sailed a little way into the unknown ocean and then had turned his timid prow towards port. "Onward!" is the motto of the earnest, all the world over, and should it not be the watchword of the Christian? Shall we be content with a wretched poverty of grace? Shall we be satisfied to wear the rags of inconsistency? God forbid. Let us bestir ourselves, and when we make headway along the river of life, may God grant us grace to cast anchor and hold our place, lest we drift back myth the next tide, or be blown back by the next change of wind. "Be ye stedfast."
We shall not have brought out the full force of the text unless we say that the apostle evidently refers to Christian work, for he says, "be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord." So that he means be stedfast in your work which the Lord has laid upon you to do. Perseverance is at once the crown and the cross of service. It is very easy to preach for a little while, but I can assure you that preaching to a congregation year after year involves no little toil; yet are we bound to be stedfast in this ministry. A spurt, a leap, a bound—these are easy, but to press on continually is the difficulty. Have you taken a class in the Sabbath-school? The novelty of it may carry you through a month or two, but, dear friend, be stedfast and hold on year after yea, for therein will lie your honor and success. If you should be discouraged, because you meet with no present success, yet persevere, yea, endure to the end. If God has given you any work to do, it is yours to press—forward in it, whether you prosper in it or not. The negro said, you remember, that if God bade him jump through a wall, whether he could go through it or not was no business of his. "Here I go," says he, "right at it." We may rest assured that the Lord never did command us to leap through a wall without causing it to give way when our faith brought us to the test. We have to obey the precept, and leave the consequences. If God says, "Do it," the command is both the warrant for our act and the security for our being aided with all necessary help. Noah preached for one hundred and twenty years, and when his term of warning ministry was over, where were his converts? He may have had a great many, but they were all dead and buried, and with the exception of himself and family, after one hundred and twenty years' ministry, there remained not one that God would preserve alive; and into the ark he went, the grandest unsuccessful preacher that ever lived, faithful unto death, to be rewarded of his God as much as if he had induced half the world to flee from the wrath to come. Let us, therefore, remain stedfast in doctrine, in character, in attainment and in labor. To this end help us, O Holy Ghost.
But the apostle adds, "unmoveable." He supposes that our stedfastness will be tried, and he bills us remain unmoveable. Be "stedfast" in times of peace, like rocks in the midst of a calm and glassy sea; be ye unmoveable if ye are assailed like those same rocks in the midst of the tempest when the billows dash against them. Brethren, when you are assailed by argument, be unmoveable. I say, "argument," but I am complimenting our adversaries, their objections do not deserve the name. It will never be possible for any man living to answer all the queries which others can raise, or reply to all objections which may be brought against the most obvious facts. If any person here were sceptical as to my standing at this present moment upon this platform, I am not certain that I should be able to convince him that I am here. I am quite sure of it myself, but I have no doubt a sceptic would be able to advance objections which would require a keener wit than mine to remove, notwithstanding that the matter would be plain enough if the objector would throw away his logic and use his common sense. Now the arguments against the resurrection which the apostle mentions, were such as he could easily remove. Such a one as this, for instance: How are the dead raised up? Paul seems to have lost his patience in answering it, and he called the man a fool; and you may depend upon it he was a fool, or else the apostle would not have called him so. Granted the existence of a God, you need never ask "How?" If there be omnipotence, there is no room for the question, "How?" God the Almighty can do what he wills, and he is a fool who asks "How?" after once he has believed in God. Most of the objections against the articles of our holy faith are contemptible, yet none the less difficult to answer because contemptible, for an argument is not always apparently strong in proportion to its reasonableness. It may be easier to obviate an objection which has some force in it than to overthrow another which has positively no force at all; in fact, the most difficult arguments to answer are thou which are insane at the core, for you must be insane yourself before you can quite catch the thought which insanity has uttered, and as you do not wish to qualify for controversy with fools, by becoming a fool yourself, you may not be able to reply to your antagonist. It will be your right course to be stedfast, unmoveable, that your adversary may see that his sophisms are of no avail. Whatever may be said against our faith we can afford to despise it, since we know that our Lord Jesus Christ has risen from the dead: the evidence of that fact is beyond dispute, and that being proved our faith rests on a rock. Prove the resurrection (and we say it is proved by the best witnesses, and plenty of them), then our faith is true, and we will hold it in the teeth of all opposition. Do not be carried away, therefore, by the sophistry of cunning men, neither be ye cast down. When it is rumoured at any time that a learned man has found out some very wonderful thing which is to put an end to the Bible, do you calmly reply—let him find out another wonderful thing, if so it pleases him. If our wise men have discovered a new origin for the human race, or if they have invented a new way of making a world, we hope their new toy will please them, but such things are not to our mind, we have other and weightier concerns besides fiddling or philosophizing. We have no more reverence for these profane dreamers than they have for the Bible; they are nothing to us. Christ has risen from the dead; nothing in physiology or geology can ever contradict that, and if he be risen from the dead them also that sleep in Jesus will God bring with him, and in that faith we abide.
We shall be met in addition to argument by what is far more powerful, namely, by surrounding example. The world never overcame the church in argument yet, for it has always refuted itself. When let alone the unbelieving world has eaten its own words, like Saturn devouring his own children. Whenever any smith in the world's armoury has forged a weapon against the truth, there has always been another smith at work in the same smithy preparing another weapon wherewith to break the first in pieces: the man has done it not in the interests of the gospel, but in his own interest, and with desire only for his own honor, but he has done the work of the Lord, not knowing what he did. The bad example of the world has often told upon the soldiers of Christ with far more powerful effect. What the arms of Rome could not do against Hannibal, his Capuan holidays are said to have accomplished; his soldiers were conquered by luxury, though invincible by force. When the church lies down at ease, she is apt to feel the diseases of abundance. The current of the world runs furiously towards sin, and the fear is lest the Lord's swimmers should not be able to stem the flood. It is sad when professors of our holy religion do as others do. It is folly to be singular, except when to be singular is to be right, but it often happens that we forget the rightness of the thing in the fear of being singular. Brethren, care nothing about custom, for custom is no excuse for sin. Be ye stedfast, and if all men are turned to this or that, listen not to their "Lo, heres" and "Lo, theres," but stand inflexible for holiness, and God, and truth. "Be ye stedfast, unmoveable."
As you are not moved by the world's custom, so take care not to be moved by its persecutions. To-day the persecutions which we meet with are very petty; they amount to little more than here and there the loss of a situation, the denial of trade, the being turned out of a farm, or more commonly they go no further than a sneer, a bad name, or a slander. But be ye stedfast, unmoveable whatever may betide. Never let a man, who is but a worm, frown you away from your God. Bid defiance to his fierce looks and angry words, and like a man of God continue in the right way whether you offend or please.
And equally be unmoveable to the world's smiles. It will put on its sweetest looks and tempt you with its painted cheeks and artful fascinations. Like Jezebel it will tire its head and look out of the window, but like Jehu do you say, "Fling her down! "No peace or truce are you to hold with this crooked and perverse generation. If God prospers you in business let not your riches make you proud; if you have to toil, and there should come in your way an easy escape from hard labor by some crooked path, accept it not, be unmoveable. Let neither the soft south wind nor the boisterous north wind stir you from your foothold. God help you to be faithful unto death.
If ever there was a period in the Christian church when professors needed to be exhorted to be "stedfast, unmoveable," it is just now, for the foundations are removed and all things are out of course. Men remove the old landmarks, they break down the pillars of the house. All things reel to and fro and stagger like a drunken man, and only he who keepeth the feet of his saints can preserve our uprightness. I see the tacklings loosed and the mast unstrengthened, and the brave vessel of the church is in an evil case. Many have left their moorings and are drifting hither and thither, their helmsmen all amazed. No longer does the squadron of the Lord sail in order of battle, but the lines are broken and the vessels yield to the tossings of winds and waves. Alas, that it should be so. O where is he that trod the sea? The pilot of the Galilean lake! I see him walking the waters, and he cries to us who still stand true to the one Lord, the one faith, and the one baptism, "Be ye stedfast, unmoveable." Whatever other denominations of Christians do, be ye true to your Lord in all things, for those who forsake him shall be written in the dust. Beloved, never stir away from the truth! Some are changeable by constitution like Reuben, "unstable as water, they shall not excel." A mind on wheels knows no rest, it is as a rolling thing before the tempest. Struggle against the desire for novelty, or it will lead you astray as the will-o'-the-wisp deceives the traveler. If you desire to be useful, if you long to honor God, if you wish to be happy, be established in the truth, and be not carried about by every wind of doctrine in these evil days. "Be ye stedfast, unmoveable."
2. The second characteristic of a Christian, however, we must speak upon. He is described as "always abounding in the work of the Lord," in which we will briefly show that there are four things.
First, dear brethren, every Christian ought to be engaged "in the work of the Lord." We should all have work to do for our divine Master. True, our everyday labor ought to be so done as to render honor to his name, but in addition to that, every Christian should be laboring in the Lord in some sphere of holy service. I shall not enlarge, but I shall pass the question round to each one." What are you doing for Jesus Christ?" I pray each one here who makes a profession of faith in Jesus to answer the question, "What am I doing in the work and service of the Lord?" If you are doing nothing, I pray you bewail your slothfulness and escape from it, for talents wrapped in napkins will be terrible witnesses against you.
Then the apostle says, secondly, we are not only to be "in the work of the Lord," but we are to abound in it. Do much, very much, all you can do, and a little more. "How is that?" says one. I do not think a man is doing all he can do if he is not attempting more than he will complete. Our vessels are never full till they run over. The little over proves our zeal, tries our faith, casts us upon God and wins his help. That which we cannot do of ourselves, leads us to call in divine strength, and then wonders are wrought. If you are only aiming at what you feel able to accomplish, your work will be a poor one, lacking in heroism, deficient in the noble element of confidence in the unseen Lord. Abound, then, and super-abound in the work of the Lord.
Next note that the apostle says, "always abounding." Some Christians think it enough to abound on Sundays: Paul says, "always abounding." That has reference to Mondays: to which day does it not refer? When you are young and in your vigor, abound in service. I recommend all young men to work for God with all their might while they can, for all too soon our energies flag, and the sere and yellow leaf forbids any more young shoots. I would equally urge every man of middle age to use all his time, gifts, and energies at once for the Lord—"always abounding." Nor should the old man retire; he is to bring forth fruit in old age. The apostle says nothing about retiring from the work of the Lord, but "always abounding." "Oh, but we must give the young people an opportunity of doing something for God!" Do you mean that you will give the young people an opportunity of doing your work, because if you do I am in arms against so gross an error, for Christian work can never be done by proxy. Throw such an idea away with abhorrence. This is the age of proxy. People are not charitable, but they beg a guinea from somebody else to be charitable with. It is said that charity nowadays means that A finds B to be in distress, and therefore asks C to help him. Let us not in this fashion shirk our work. Go and do your own work, each man bearing his own burden, and not trying to pile a double load on other men's shoulders. Brethren, from morn till night sow beside all waters with unstinting hand.
The text calls this service "the work of the Lord," and we must ever bear this in mind; so that if we are enabled to abound in Christian service we may never become proud, but may remember that it is God's work in us rather than our own work, and whatever we accomplish is accomplished rather by God in us than by us for God. Jesus tells us, "Without me ye can do nothing." "Always abound," my brethren, not only in work for the Lord, but in the work of the Lord in yourselves, for only as he works in you to will and to do will you be able to work in his name acceptably.
Put these two things together, the man is to be stedfast, and to abound in work. To come back to my figure of a soldier, these two things are wanted—we want a soldier who can hold his position under a galling fire, but we want him also to dash to the front and lead on a forlorn hope. We need many spiritual Uhlans who can ride ahead and pioneer for others with dauntless courage, but we cannot dispense with the heavy armed infantry who hold their own and wait till the battle turns. It is said that the French had courage enough on the spur of the moment to have rushed up to the cannon's mouth, but that the German was the victor because he could quietly abide the heat of the battle and when affairs looked black, he doggedly kept his post. In the long run stay is the winning virtue; he that endureth to the end the same shall be saved. He who can wait with hope is the man to fight with courage. He crouches down until the fit moment comes, and then he leaps like a lion from the thicket upon the foe. God grant that we may have in this place a body of Christian people who shall be stedfast and unmoveable, yet at an times as diligent as they are firm, as intensely zealous as they are obstinately conservative of the truth as it is in Jesus. "Stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord."
II. Our last point is THE MOTIVE WHICH URGES US TO THESE TWO DUTIES. There are a great many other motives, but the one mentioned in the text is "forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord." If we derive our motives for Christian labor or stedfastness from the things which we see, our spirit will oscillate from ardor into coldness, it will rise and fall with the circumstances around us. It is comparatively easy for a successful man to go on preaching or otherwise laboring for the Lord, but I admire the perseverance of the man who remains faithful under defeat. To get such a faithfulness we must disentangle ourselves from the idea of being rewarded here; we must be stedfast and unmoveable though nobody praises us, and abound in the work of the Lord though no fruit should come from it, because we have looked beyond this present realm of death, and have gazed into another world where the resurrection shall bring with it our reward.
Dear brethren, let us be stedfast, for our principles are true. If Christ has not risen from the dead, then we are the dupes of an imposition, and let us give it up. Why should we credulously adhere to that which is false? But if Christ hath risen from the dead, then our doctrines are true, and let us hold them firmly and promulgate them earnestly. Since our cause is a good one, let us seek to advance it. Only that which is true will live, time devours the false; the death-warrant of every false doctrine is signed. A fire is already kindled which will consume the wood and hay and stubble of error, but our principles are gold and silver and precious stones, and will endure the flame. "Therefore, let us be stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord." Jesus Christ is risen from the dead, therefore what we do is not done for a dead Christ. We are not fighting for a dead man's cause; we are not contending for an effete dynasty, or a name to conjure by, but we have a living captain, a reigning king, one who is able both to occupy the throne and to lead on our hosts to battle. Oh, by the Christ in glory, I beseech you, brethren, be ye stedfast! If it could be proved to-morrow that Napoleon still lived, there might be some hope for his party, but with the chieftain dead the cause faints. Now Jesus lives; as surely as he died he rose and lives again, and his name shall endure for ever, his name shall be continued as long as the sun, and men shall be blessed in him, all generations shall call him blessed. The colors of that grand old red-cross flag, to defend which your fathers bled, have not in any degree become faded. It has braved a thousand years the battle and the breeze, but its history is as yet in its infancy. Our grand cause is imaged this day, not by a baby in the Virgin's arms, nor by a dead man in the hands of his enemies, but by a living, reigning, triumphant, glorified Christ, full of splendor and of majesty. Let us rally to his call; for he must reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet. Behold, he cometh! Even now flee angels bring forth the white horse caparisoned for the conqueror, he who is called the faithful and True One shall ride thereon at the head of his elect armies. Even at this moment we see the ensign gleaming above the horizon. The Lord is on his way. Our Captain putteth on his Gesture dipped in blood, while on his head are many crowns. He shall smite the nations, and rule them with a rod of iron, and he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS. Let us continue true to him, for evil would be our case if we were to desert his cause, and then should see him come in the glory of his Father, attended by cohorts of angels. It would be a dreadful thing to have deserted the army just when the shout of "victory" was about to be raised. Be ye stedfast, unmoveable, for he is risen, and he ever liveth to secure the victory.
Our work of faith is not in vain, because we shall rise again. If what we do for God were to have its only reward on earth, it were a poor prospect. Strike out the hope of the hereafter, and the Christian's reward would be gone; but, beloved, we shall rise again. Our work is ended when our eye is closed in death, but our life is not ended with our work. We shall preach no more, we shall no more teach the little children, are shall no more talk with the wayfarer about the Savior; but we shall enjoy better things than these, for we shall sit upon our Savior's throne even as he sits upon his Father's throne. Our heads shall have crowns to deck them, our hands shall wave the palm of victory; we shall put on the white robe—the victors apparel; we shall stand around the throne in triumph, and shall behold and share the glories of the Son of God. O brethren, shrink not, for the crown is just within your reach. Never think of diminishing your service, rather increase it, for the reward is close at hand. And remember that as you will rise again, so those whom you come in contact with will also rise again. When I have preached the gospel on a Sunday I have thought, "Well, I shall never see many of these people again," and the reflection has flashed across my mind, "Yes, I shall; and if I have faithfully, as God's servant, preached the truth, I shall not need to be afraid to see them either." It they have received benefit and found Christ through the witness I have borne, they shall be my reward hereafter in the land of the living, and even if they reject the testimony, yet shall they bear their witness to my faithfulness in having preached to them the word of God, for they shall rise again. O beloved, what is this poor world? There, shut your eyes to it, for it is not worth your gaze. What is there here below? What see I but fleeting shadows and dreams, and phantoms? What shall I live for? What is there worth living for beneath you stars? What, if I hoard up wealth, I shall have to leave it to ungrateful heirs! What if I get fame, yet how can the breath of man add to my comfort when I lie tossing on the verge of eternity? What is there worth living for, I say, beneath yon stars? But there is a something that makes it worth while existing and makes life grand and noble. It is this: if I may crown with praise that head which for my sake was crowned with thorns, if I may honor him who was dishonored for my sake, if to the manifestation of the glories of Jehovah I may have contributed a share, if at the reading of the records of all time it may be found that I put out my talent as a faithful servant, and gained interest for my Master, it shall be well. Saved not of debt-far hence the thought!—but of grace alone, yet shall it be no small thing, out of a sense of indebtedness to grace, to have lived and loved and died for Jesus.
What more can I say? are there no ambitions among you? I know there are. Young men, consecrate yourselves to God this day. If you have rooked to Jesus and trusted him, serve him for ever. Preach him if you can; go abroad into the foreign field if you may. If you cannot do that, make money for him that you may give it to his cause. Open your shop for his sake, let everything be done for Jesus. Take this henceforth for your motto—All for Jesus, always for Jesus, everywhere for Jesus. He deserves it. I should not so speak to you if you had to live in this world only. Alas, for the love of Jesus, if thou wert all and nought beside, O earth! But there is another life—live for it. There is another world—live for it. There is a resurrection, there is eternal blessedness, there is glory, there are crowns of pure reward—live for them, by God's grace live for them. The Lord bless you, and save you. Amen.
