Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1506
“The Lord will perfect that which concerns me: Your mercy, O Lord, endures forever: forsake not the works of Your own hands.” Psalm 138:8.
CONTINUALLY I am clearing the ground and laying the foundation of eternal salvation in the Grace of God which was manifested in Christ Jesus when He came into the world to save sinners. This I did this morning and the Lord has set His seal thereon right speedily, which is to me a sure proof that the frequent preaching of the foundation Truths of God is according to the mind of God. That necessary work cannot be done too often, for men need to hear the true Gospel as often as they hear the striking of the hour and even then, they forget it. Yet do not all forget. There are a few, like those who were saved with Noah, who seek the Ark of salvation and live.
To those who have newly come to put their trust in Jesus I wish to speak this evening and I do so with much delight, for as the sight of the new-born babe makes glad the mother, so does the news of a new-born soul fill me with exceeding joy! Good tidings have come to my ears! We do not often sow and reap quite so quickly as I have done on this occasion, for since this morning’s service I have hopeful evidence that God has blessed the Word to many souls and my beloved fellow helpers, who watch around this congregation like scouts around an army, report that the slain of the Lord have been many.
Now, between half-past twelve o’clock this morning and this time in the evening such souls have gone a day’s journey towards Heaven and already they have begun, I dare say, to question themselves and possibly to be exercised with some few fears. Thus early they may have met with lions in the way, or have found worse than real lions in their own fears. They have only lately known the Lord, but already they are growing anxious and looking into the future with a somewhat troubled gaze. Therefore we come forth lovingly as a shepherd hastens to cherish the newborn lambs. We come to the little ones with words of good cheer, for they need them and we have special orders from our Master to see that they are tenderly comforted.
We trust to also speak to those who have known the Lord for many years, some words of help with regard to matters which may now be causing them alarm. The consolations of the Lord are very reviving and they abound in number, therefore let small and great partake of them. “Comfort you, comfort you My people, says your God.” When a man becomes a Christian and the Grace of God commences its work in his soul, he learns to be serious and thoughtful. That is one of the first noticeable changes in him. He renounces his former carelessness and indifference and becomes a sober, considerate man in whose mind there is a deep concern as to his own character in the sight of God. He is concerned about the temptations he meets with in his walk among the sons of men lest these temptations should be too much for him and he should be betrayed into sin.
He longs to lead a holy life. In fact, holiness is his great concern. He prays that he may leave such a life behind him for others to remember as shall be worth their following as an example. He asks himself, “Will the hope I have just obtained really endure to the last days of my life? Will it sustain me amidst the pangs and weaknesses of death? Is it truly such that when I go before the burning Throne of God, Himself, I need not tremble?” Such matters were sport to him once—they are serious questions now. He has thrown down the cap and bells of the jester and taken up the staff of a pilgrim and the sword of a warrior, confessing in an unmistakable manner that “life is real, life is earnest.”
He is a man of concern now, concerned about his soul’s affairs, his sins, his life, his death, his eternal salvation. A solemn air is about him—he hears the wheels of eternity sounding in his ears, he girds his loins for his lifework and he puts away childish things. This is all well, but as every state has its dangers, so the peril of religious concern is despondency. Thoughtfulness soon degenerates into distrust and holy anxiety easily rusts into unbelief. The more a man looks within him, the less he can trust himself, and the more a man looks around him, the more he feels that he is in
danger and so he is apt very early in his Christian course to be downcast and much afraid and to say within himself, “I shall surely one day fall by the hands of the enemy. My confidence will prove to be a delusion and my conversion a fiction.” He is fearful as to the result of future temptations like a fresh recruit in the battle who feels certain that every boom of the cannon proclaims his death.
Now I want, if God will help me, to meet such fears tonight. May the Divine Spirit enable us to have a strong and mighty faith in God, not only with regard to past transgression, which is clean gone through the atoning blood, but with regard to all the difficulties and dangers of the present and future. And may we drink into the spirit of the text which is now before us—“The Lord will perfect that which concerns me: Your mercy, O Lord, endures forever: forsake not the works of Your own hands.”