Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1568
Delivered on Sunday Morning, November 21, 1880
“Do you believe this?” John 11:26.
THE Savior said to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life: He that believes in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. DO YOU BELIEVE THIS?” When Believers are sorrowful, they may be assured that a consolation is provided exactly adapted to their cases. For every lock that God has made, He has provided a key. As every blade of grass has its own drop, so every grief has its comfort. I doubt not that for every pain which racks this mortal frame there is a pain reliever among the herbs of the fields and for every disease there is a remedy in God’s wondrous laboratory if we could but find it.
As for us who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, we may rest assured that if we are borne down by excessive sorrow, it is almost always our own fault and arises from a defect in our faith—for if our faith were as strong as it ought to be, we would “take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches and in distresses for Christ’s sake.” We would find that as our tribulations abounded, so would our consolations abound by Christ Jesus. It will be well, therefore, when we are greatly distressed, not so much to look to the apparent cause of the present trouble as at the condition of our own hearts—it will be wise to inquire where our faith is lacking and what it may be which prevents our laying hold upon the comfort provided for the present distress.
It frequently happens that our faith is defective because of slender knowledge. A man cannot believe what he does not know. My dear, tried Friend, there is a promise in the Scriptures which would exactly meet your case and, if grasped by faith, it would immediately cheer you! But you know nothing of its efficacy because you may never yet have read it, or, having read it, you may never have paused over it and considered its meaning and so you are needlessly distressed because your relief lies close at hand. It may be that as yet you have not learned the whole circle of Gospel doctrines and this, also, deprives you of comfort. You have laid hold upon the vital and saving part of Revelation, but the strengthening and exhilarating part of it you know not.
You have fed on the necessary bread of Christ’s house, but not upon the luscious fruits of His garden! You have been in the field, but you have not walked in the garden to eat His pleasant fruit. Faith cannot believe what it does not know and, therefore, you have missed fat things full of marrow and wines on the lees well-refined which might have been your strength and your joy. We would, all of us, grow in comfort if we grew in Grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and had a more intelligent appreciation of the preciousness of the Truths of God which He has revealed! Faith may be defective through ignorance and it may also be defective through a lack of appreciation of the Person of Christ. It was so in Martha’s case—she did not know enough about her Lord to perceive His power to meet her sorrow.
The Apostle Paul says, in the passage which I just now quoted, “Grow in Grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,” as if the knowledge of Jesus were, indeed, the most important and gracious knowledge which a Believer can obtain and so it is! If we are but half instructed as to our Lord, we shall be but half-comforted. O mourners, you have not rated the Savior highly enough! You have not yet a large enough idea of His love for you and of His design of Infinite Wisdom in permitting you to be afflicted. If the Lord Jesus were better known, our afflictions would be lightened and our hearts would even rejoice in them! If we did but know You, O blessed Christ, then if the same trials remained with us they would lose their gloom beneath Your smile and we would even come to rejoice in them as ministering to our fellowship with You in Your sufferings! Jesus known, sorrow loses its sting—surely even the bitterness of death is past!
It is not to be supposed that every true Believer in Christ is assuredly a perfect Believer. Martha truly believed in Jesus, but she did not perfectly believe in Him. I do not know how many here have, or think they have, perfect faith—such good people will get very little from the discourse of this morning—but then, happily, they do not need it! Those of us who have
an imperfect faith—and I suspect that this would describe most of us—may gather instruction from the Savior’s question to Martha, “Do you believe this?” May the Holy Spirit cause it to be so. Let us think we hear His loving lips enquiring of us at this time concerning this Truth and the other—“Do you believe this?”
We desire to believe everything that is true and we wish to receive into our minds every doctrine which the Holy Spirit has revealed, for we would perfect our discipleship and is not this one of its privileges—“When He, the Spirit of Truth, is come, He shall guide you into all Truth”? We long to believe everything that is within the range of our spiritual knowledge, so that our faith, taking the entire range of Divine Truth, may be complete for every emergency and mighty in every conflict. Submit, then, to a heart-searching enquiry as to your faith and hear Jesus say, by His Spirit, “Do you believe