Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1335
“Therefore, Sirs, be of good cheer: for I believe God, that it shall be even as it was told me.” Acts 27:25.
THE presence of a brave man in the hour of danger is a very great comfort to his companions. It is a grand thing to observe Paul so bold, so calm in the midst of all the hurly-burly of the storm. He was talking so cheerfully and so encouragingly to the crew and to the soldiers and to the prisoners. You must have seen, in many events in history, that it is the one man, after all, that wins the battle. All the rest play their parts well when the one heroic spirit lifts the standard. Every now and then we hear some simpleton or other talking against a “one-man ministry,” when it has been a one-man ministry from the commencement of the world to the present day! And whenever you try to have any other form of ministry, except that of each individual saint discharging his own ministry, and doing it thoroughly and heartily and independently and bravely in the sight of God, you very soon run upon quicksand.
Remember, Christian man, that wherever you are placed, you are to be the one man. You are to have courage and independence of spirit and strength of mind received from God, that with it you may comfort those around you who are of the weaker sort. So act that your confidence in God shall strengthen the weak hands and confirm the feeble knees— and, by God’s Grace, your calm, quiet look shall say to them that are of a faint heart, “Be strong! Fear not.” If you are to do this, and I trust you will do it, in the sick chamber, in the midst of the troubles of life, in the Church and everywhere else, you must be strong!
Take it as a good rule that nothing can come out of you that is not in you. You cannot render real encouragement to others unless you have courage within yourself. Now, the reason why Paul was able to embolden his companions was that he had encouraged himself in his God. He was calm, or else he could not have calmed those around him. Imagine him excited and all in a tremble, and yet saying, “Sirs, be of good cheer.” Why they would have thought that he mocked them and they would have replied, “Be of good cheer yourself, Sir, before you encourage us.” So my dear Brothers and Sisters, you must trust God and be calm and strong, or else you will not be of much service in the world and in the Church as you ought to be. Get full, and then you will run over, but you can never fill others till you become full yourselves.
Be yourselves, “strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might,” and then you will be, as a standard, lifted up to which the timid will rally. At this time we are going to speak very little about Paul, but a great deal to ourselves. May God speak to us! May the Holy Spirit cheer our hearts and lead us into the way of peace and power! If Paul was strong it was because he believed God! Let us speak about that faith. Paul, being strong, spoke words of good cheer to others. Let us, in the second place, see whether we cannot speak words of encouragement to our comrades in distress. We will finish up with such words as God may give us.
I. First, then, PAUL WAS STRONG BECAUSE HE BELIEVED. Faith makes men strong—not in the head, but in the heart. Doubting people are generally headstrong—the Thomas sort of people who obstinately declare that they will not believe unless they can have proofs of their own choosing. If you read certain newspapers, journals, quarterly reviews and so on, you will see that the doubting people who are always extolling skepticism and making out that there is more faith in their doubt than in half the creeds, and so on, are particularly strong in the upper region, namely, in the head— only it is that sort of head-strength which implies real weakness, for obstinacy seldom goes with wisdom!
They are always sneering at Believers as a feeble folk, which is a clear sign that they are not very strong, themselves. This has been a rule without exception forever, that when a man despises his opponent, he is, himself, the party who ought to be despised. When certain writers rave about “evangelical platitudes,” as they commonly do, they only see in others a fault with which they are largely chargeable themselves. Anybody who glances at the skeptical literature of the present day will bear me out that the platitudes have gone over to the doubting side of the house. No people can write such fluent nonsense and talk such absurdity as the school of modem doubt and “culture!”
They think themselves the wisest of the wise, but, professing to be wise, they have become fools! And I know what I say. It is true that the evangelical party has become flat and stale, but the other party has beaten us at that. They are more dull, more stale and more unprofitable by far! When a man leaves faith, he leaves strength. When he takes up with “liberal” views in religion and does not believe anything in particular, he has lost the bone and sinew of his soul. It is true all round, in all things, that he who firmly believes has an element of power which the doubter knows nothing of. Even if a man is somewhat mistaken in what he believes, there is a power in his faith, though it may be, in part, power for mischief.