Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1070
“All hope that we should be sa ved was then taken away.” Acts 27:20.
HERE was a case of extreme peril, in which there seemed to be no possibility whatever of any of the lives of nearly 300 persons being preserved. In this emergency the Apostle Paul resorted to prayer. We may avail ourselves of this privilege in the worst pinch. When things are so black that they cannot be any darker we may still pray. God is good at a dead lift. Our extremities, as we well know, are always His opportunities. When we can do nothing to help ourselves, let us pray and we can get help from God in everything. Or, after we have done the little we can do, let us leave all with God and resort to Him in prayer.
This is one case out of many in which prayer has averted peril while faith has grappled with fear and despair has been routed from the heart by a calm dependence on the Lord. Thus Paul was enabled by his supplication to save the lives of all that were in the ship. Do not think, dear Brothers and Sisters, then, that your prayers in time of extremity will prove fruitless. God enable you to pray with faith! Remember there never was a prayer of faith that failed yet! Heaven and earth shall pass away but this Truth of God shall never cease to be true, that God is the Hearer of prayer if we will but believe in Him. He that wavers must not expect to receive an answer, but he that is confident in his God shall never be confounded.
However, I am going to take the text out of its connection—I need to use it for different reasons and purposes. We have frequently known men to be in a condition in which they have said that all hope that they should be saved was taken away. We are going to speak to such tonight. Sometimes I have been glad to hear that cry and sometimes I have deplored it. Sometimes I have heartily sympathized with it. Upon those three phases of the cry we shall speak.
I. Sometimes, as I have said, when we have heard a man say that all hope that he shall be saved has been taken away, we have REJOICED TO HEAR HIM SAY SO. Does that appear to be a cruel statement? It is not meant to be. Let me explain and then I hope you will understand it. Multitudes of persons are sailing in what they think to be the good ship of self-righteousness—they are expecting that they shall get to Heaven in her. But she never did carry a soul safely into the fair haven yet and she never will.
Self-righteousness is as rapid a road to ruin as outward sin itself. We may as certainly destroy ourselves by opposing the righteousness of Christ as by transgressing the Law of God. Self-righteousness is as much an insult to God as blasphemy and God will never accept it, neither shall any soul enter Heaven by it. Now, this vessel manages to keep on her way against all the good advice of Scripture. Often men have a soft south wind blowing and things go easy with them, and they believe that through their own doings they shall assuredly find the port of Peace. I am glad, therefore, when some terrific tempest overtakes this vessel and when men’s hopes, through their own doings and their own feelings, are utterly wrecked.
I am glad when the old ship parts timber from timber—when she goes aground and breaks to pieces and men find safety in some other way—for whatever seemingly safety they may have today will only delude them. It must end in destruction and it is therefore a thousand mercies when they find it out soon enough to get another and a better hope of being saved rather than this, which will certainly deceive them. I remember very well when that terrific storm blew on my vessel. It was as good a vessel as any of you have, although I would be bound to say each of you would vindicate your own. The sails needed mending and here and there she needed a little touch of paint, but for all that she was sea-worthy and fit to be registered “A.1.” at Lloyd’s, and entered in the first class—at least so I thought.
And I remember when the storm blew over her and she went to pieces! I bless God that she went to pieces altogether, for I should have been kept on board to this very minute if I had not been washed off. I tried to cling to it to the very last
plank but I was obliged to give it up and look somewhere else for help and safety. Now, it will happen, sometimes, when God is dealing with a self-righteous person who is delighting himself with the thought that he is all right—that he is not a great sinner, that he is a religious person, that he takes the sacraments, that he says his prayers, that he is as good as most people, perhaps rather better—and that if he does not go to Heaven he wonders who will.
I say it will happen to such a man, if God loves him, (if He does not care about him He will let him go on in his own way till he is destroyed, but if He has set His eternal love on him it will so happen)—that a storm will come, perhaps on a sudden, just as the tempest did to Paul’s vessel, and twist him right round and make his gallant vessel in the storm to be like a thing that has lost its mind and will not obey the rudder and cannot be quieted and controlled. Oh, we have seen them, sometimes, when they have woke up on a sudden and said, “I never knew this! I could not have believed it! I find myself to be a sinful creature, lost and undone and up to this moment I really thought I was as right as could be and almost fit for Heaven, and quite sure of it.”