Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 691
Delivered on Sunday Evening, May 13, 1866, by C. H. Spurgeon, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington
“If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” Psalm 11:3.
WE are walking along through the vineyard of this Psalm, plucking the clusters on the right hand and on the left, when suddenly, with a tremendous roar, the “if of our text, like a young lion, leaps out upon us. What shall we do with it? Let us play the man, like Samson, and rend it as though it were a kid and doubtless we shall find honey in it, and shall have again to put forth our riddle, “Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness.” These “ifs” are terrible lions, but when Divine Grace enables us to slay them, they become good storehouses for sweetness.
As the children of Israel spoiled the Egyptians and made themselves rich from the spoils of their oppressors, both when they left Egypt and after the passage of the Red Sea, so let us gather riches of comfort and arms for future warfare from this “if which threatens to enthrall the mind of the Christian and hold him in the chains of fear and doubt. It comes to us as a keen shaft from the camp of the foe, but by the Grace of God we will fit it to our string, and with the arms of faith shoot it back again and may God in mercy guide it to the joints of some foeman’s harness.
This “if” may have a bitter taste at first, but I am persuaded that it will have a wholesome effect upon us to use it. Yes, it will yield some spiritual sustenance to our souls. We will welcome its searching and shaking power now, as it will only tend to prepare us for the time when the four winds may come upon our house and the blast of the Terrible One be as a storm against the wall. If we use this giant battering ram “if,” now, it will show us our weakness and our strength so that we may correct the one and rejoice over the other.
We shall take this “if in two ways. First, we shall consider it as an “if which is nothing but an “if.” And secondly, we shall consider it as an “if” which is a great deal more than an “if.”
I. We shall first CONSIDER THIS “IF” AS BEING NOTHING BUT AN “IF.” “If the foundations are removed, what can the righteous do?” My Brethren, there are certain spiritual foundations which God has laid in Zion which never can be removed. There are certain foundations against which the gates of Hell cannot prevail—which time cannot shake—and which eternity will only confirm. If we venture to speak of these foundations being removed, it can only be in hypothetical terms and with the word, “if”— for there must always be in our souls the conviction that the foundations of God stand sure.
I will mention a few of these foundation—things which we know cannot be removed, but we will ask the question— if they should be removed, what then? First we will take the foundation Book. This Word of God, this Revelation of Himself which He has made to us by Prophets and by seers, by Apostles and by evangelists, and by His own dear Son. This Book we believe to be true even in its jots and tittles. Whatever form of thought we may adopt as to the method of inspiration, we believe this Book to be inspired throughout, and we accept all its utterances as the teachings of the Most High.
From the first Word of it to the last we give our “unfeigned assent and consent” to it as being nothing less and nothing more than the Word of Jehovah, the Lord our God. But if it should not be so, what can the righteous do, then? If, after all, the attacks of modern skeptics should have some force in them. If they can dislodge part of the Word of God from its sure resting place. If first one stone shall topple from the summit of the battlements and then another shall be loosened from the embankment, and by-and-by its enemies should come to work with their great bars upon the very lowest and most valuable stones in the wall—what then?
What if the Book should be a delusion? What if it should be false? Ah, then, my Brothers and Sisters, what can the righteous do? Oh, it had been better for us that we had never been born than that the Bible should not be true! Here is the only balm that heals the wounds that sin has made! Here is the only bread that satisfies the hungering of our spirits! If that is not true, O God, why did You create us, and why did You suffer such a Book as that to come across our path to mock us, supplying, as it does, all that hope can desire, and all that our deepest interests can crave after?
Oh, cruel God, to permit so sweet a dream to charm us even for a while, if it is not true! But oh, Beloved, we come back with a sacred recoil to this—it is true—it must be true and if for no other reason because it so suits the craving of our inward consciousness. Because it so uplifts us out of the natural beggary and meanness of our condition and puts us on such a heavenly footing. It makes us commune with the Most High and fills us with such rapt and heavenly thoughts! It must be true, or else what could we do?