Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 690
Delivered on Sunday Morning, May 13, 1866, by C. H. Spurgeon, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington
“The removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.” Hebrews 12:27.
IT is a most popular error that the world stands still and is fixed and immovable. This has been touted as an astronomical theory, but as a matter of practical principle it still reigns in men’s minds. Galileo said, “No, the world is not a fixed body, it moves.” Peter had long before declared that all these things should be dissolved. At last men believed the astronomer—but they still doubt the Apostle, or at least forget his doctrine. Though it is clear as noonday in Scripture and in experience that stability is not to be found beneath the moon, yet men are forever building upon earth’s quicksand as if it were substantial rock, and heaping up its dust as though it would not all be blown away.
“This is the substance,” cries the miser, as he clutches his bags of gold. “Heaven and Hell are myths to me.” “This is the main chance,” whispers the merchant as he pushes vigorously his commercial speculations. “As for spiritual things they are for mere dreamers and sentimentalists. Cash is the true treasure.” Ah, Sirs, you base your statements upon a foundation of falsehood! This world is as certainly a mere revolving ball as to human life as it is astronomically! And hopes founded on it will as surely come to nothing as will card houses in a storm. Here we have no abiding city and it is in vain to attempt to build one. This world is not the rock beneath our feet which it seems to be—it is no better than those green, but treacherously soft and bottomless bogs which swallow up unwary travelers!
We talk of terra firma as if there could be such a thing as solid earth! Never was an adjective more thoroughly misused, for the world passes away and the fashion thereof. Every now and then, in order to enforce this distasteful truth upon us, the God of Providence gives the world, in some way or other, a warning shake. The Lord has only to lay one finger upon the world and the mountains are carried into the midst of the sea, while the waters of the ocean roar and are troubled until the mountains shake with their swelling.
The most solid fabrics of human skill and industry are dissolved at the voice of the Most High. Though they appear to possess the firmness of earth and claim the sublimity of Heaven, yet one Divine word shakes earth and Heaven in a moment. Looking back through history you will observe many periods of very tremendous shakings—the records of which are indelibly engraved upon human memory. An empire has been piled up by conquest and cemented by policy and power. Monarchs of gigantic mind have been sustained by armies of indomitable valor and great dynasties have been established whose reign promised to be as enduring as the sun. But God has shaken, and the diadem has fallen, and the kingdom become desolate.
Babylon sat as a Queen and said, “I shall see no sorrow,” but she became desolate and her palaces crumbled into a heap of ruins. The power of Persia wore the aspect of permanence and proudly claimed universal dominion, but the iron rod of Alexander broke it in pieces as a potter’s vessel. Nor could the Macedonian empire long continue but soon gave place to the mightier power of Rome, which, with all its valiant legions, lasted but its time and then, like a bowing wall, fell headlong to the ground. Even as a moment’s foam dissolves into the wave that bears it and is lost forever, so dynasties, republics, empires all pass away. As a dream, when one awakes, their image is gone forever.
Between the intervals of these great revolutions there have been changes less extensive but still of the same warning character. Every now and then in our commerce God gives a serious shake to our affairs. Men usually have a degree of confidence in their fellow men, and on the strength of this legitimate confidence, business flourishes. But, all of a sudden, as though seized with madness, they say in their haste with David, “All men are liars,” and clamor for their gold. The boat is quite able to ferry them all across the stream if they will have patience—but they are carried away with the notion that it will soon be swamped.
And therefore they push and fight to get on board all at once and bring to pass the very evil which they feared! Had they but a little patience and a little forbearance—were they much less greedy and much more considerate of others— things might still go well enough. But selfishness takes fire at the least suspicion, blazes into mistrust, and setting its neighbor’s house on fire to save its own candle, soon finds its own dwelling in flames, too. Greed is so afraid lest one brick of its house should be stolen that it pulls out the cornerstone to keep it safe under the bed—and the whole building tumbles about its ears.