Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 439
“And David said in his heart, I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul.’” 1 Samuel 27:1. To doubt the loving kindness of God is thought by some to be a very small sin. In fact, some have even exalted the doubts and fears of God’s people into fruits and grace and evidences of great advancement in experience. It is humiliating to observe that certain ministers have pampered and petted men in unbelief and distrust of God, being in this matter false to their Master and to the souls of His people. Far be it from me to smite the feeble of the flock. But their sins I must and will smite, since it is my firm conviction that to doubt the kindness, the faithfulness, and the love of God is a very heinous offense. Unbelief is akin to Atheism. Atheism denies God’s existence—unbelief denies His goodness and since goodness is essential to God, these doubts do, in reality, stab at His very Being. That can be no light sin which makes God a liar. And yet unbelief does, in effect, cast foul and slanderous suspicion upon the veracity of the Holy One of Israel. That can be no small offense which charges the Creator of Heaven and earth with perjury. And yet, if I mistrust His oath, and will not believe His promises sealed with the blood of His own Son, I count the oath of God to be unworthy of my trust. And so I do, in very deed, accuse the King of Heaven as false to His Covenant and oath. Besides, as I shall have to show this morning, unbelief of God is the fountain of innumerable sins. As the black cloud is the mother of many raindrops, so dark unbelief is the parent of many crimes. And what if I should say that unbelief concentrates the vice of ages into a moment, and gathers up the virus of all the offenses of the race in one transgression? I should not be far from the mark. But I shall say no strong words in the preface, because methinks the incident in David’s history, to which I shall call your attention this morning, will be in itself enough to lead you to give your verdict with mine—that unbelief is a damnable sin, that it should be condemned by every Believer, should be struggled against, should if possible be subdued— and certainly should be the object of our deep repentance and abhorrence. Now let us listen to David, and may his sin and sorrow be as beacons to warn us from evil! “David said in his heart, I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul.” First, I shall remark that what he said in his heart was false. Secondly, we shall ask the question, how he came to think so? And then we shall notice, in the third place, what mischief came of such a hard unbelieving thought. I. First, THE THOUGHT OF DAVID’S HEART WAS FALSE. He said, “I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul.”
We might conclude it to be false upon the very face of it, because there certainly was no evidence to prove it. On no one occasion had the Lord deserted His servant. He had been placed in perilous positions very often, but not one single instance had occurred in which God’s strength was not sufficient for him. The trials to which he had been exposed had been varied—they had not assumed one form, only, but many. Yet in every case He who sent the trial had also graciously ordained a way of escape.
David could not put his finger upon any entry in his diary and say of it, “Here is evidence that God will forsake me.” In looking back through his whole life, from the time when he kept his father’s sheep, and slew the lion and the bear, onward to the day when he challenged the Philistine, and upward to this moment—when he had just escaped from his bloodthirsty pursuer—he could not find a solitary fact which should be proof that God had changed His mind and would leave His anointed to fall into the hand of his cruel enemy.
Now, mark—when you and I doubt God’s Word there is this to be said of it—we mistrust it without a cause. I bear my willing testimony that I have no reason to doubt my Lord, nor even the shadow of a reason—and I think that you who were in Christ many years before I knew Him can say that since you have trusted in Him you have never once had any reason to suspect His faithfulness, or to imagine that He would cast you away.
Brethren, we condemn not a man without evidence. Shall we condemn our loving Lord without evidence? I challenge Heaven and earth and Hell this morning to bring any proof that God is untrue. From the depths of Hell I call the fiends, and from this earth I call the tried and afflicted Believers, and to Heaven I appeal and challenge the long experience of the blood-washed host—there is not to be found in the three realms a single one who can bear evidence of a fact which should disprove the goodness of God, or weaken His claim to be trusted by His servants.
Now let our unbelief be thrown out. Let our sense of justice expel it at once. Let us be just to God as well as to man. And if never yet has He failed any of His people, or broken a solitary promise, far be it from us to doubt or to be unbelieving—