Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1646
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Evening, February 5, 1882
“From that time many of His disciples went back and walkedno more with Him. Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will you, also, go away? Then Simon Peter answered Him, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” John 6:66-69.
BROTHERS AND SISTERS, we believe that the righteous shall hold on his way and he that has clean hands shall wax stronger and stronger. We also believe that he that believes in Christ “has everlasting life” and, consequently, must live forever. The living water which Christ gives a man shall be in him a well of water springing up unto everlasting life. Our Lord has said of His sheep that they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of His hands. Yet we know that if any man draws back, the Lord will have no pleasure in him, and we are sure that, “without holiness no man shall see the Lord.” Therefore we very heartily sing the verse in one of our hymns—
“We ha ve no fear that You should lose
One whom eternal love could choose;
But we would never this Grace abuse,
Let us not fall! Let us not fall!
We consider that it would be an abusing of this Grace if we were to grow careless, presumptuous, high-minded and imagine that for ourselves, personally, it would not be possible to become apostates, or even to turn aside a little from the right way. We believe the Truth of God of the Final Perseverance of the Saints concerning the true people of God, but the question comes to our heart, Are we such? Is there in us the incorruptible Seed which lives and abides forever? And how are we to know that we are such but by this very perseverance which, while it is an effect of Grace, is also one of the most certain tokens of it, for there is not the true Grace of God in the heart where there is no perseverance in Grace even unto the end.
“He that endures to the end shall be saved.” But what if we should only have the transient gleams of temporary illumination and should relapse into a thick Egyptian night? Here is cause enough for holy fear! Come, then, Brothers and Sisters, trusting in the Immutable Grace and love and power of God, let each man, nevertheless, examine himself and let this be a time of heart-searching. Say not this is out of place when we are just gathering around the table of the Lord, for is it not written, “Let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread”? Let us get ready to come to the festival of our Lord’s Supper by putting our Lord’s question, each one to His own heart, and trying to answer it by the help of God’s own Spirit.
First, the reason for the question—Why did Christ ask of the twelve, “Will you, also, go away?” Then, secondly, the question itself. And, thirdly, the answer which Peter most fitly gave to it, which, I doubt not, he gave in the name and on the behalf of all his Brothers. The same reply we would also give tonight— “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
I. First, then, WHY DID THE SAVIOR ASK THE TWELVE THIS QUESTION? He would not have caused them needless pain. He had a wise reason for trying them with such an enquiry. It was, first, because it was a season of defection. “From that time many went back and walked no more with Him.” You will find, I think, that in all Churches there are times of flocking in, when many fly to the Church like doves to their windows. But happy is that Church which never has a time of flying out, when numbers who have been tested, fail, and are no more to be found. Churches have summers, like our gardens, and then all things are full. But then come their winters and, alas, what emptying is seen!
Have we not all seen the flood when the tide has come up far upon the beach? And have we not all marked the ebb when every wave has seemed to fall short of that which preceded it? Such ebbs and floods there are in the history of the
Kingdom of Christ. One day, “The kingdom of God suffers violence and every man presses into it.” At another time men seem to be ashamed of the Christian faith and they wander off into a thousand delusions—and the Church is diminished and brought low by heresy, by worldliness, by lukewarmness and by all sorts of evils.
Often may the chronicle run thus—“Then all the disciples forsook Him and fled.” It is right, then, at times when those that did run well are hindered, that the Master should say to those who, for a while, remain steadfast, “Will you, also, go away?” Ah, dear Friends, some of you are very steadfast now while this Church flourishes—how would you be if the pastor were dead, or his name in ill-repute? How would you be if the attendance on the means of Grace grew slack? How would you be if there was a decline in all the work of the Church? Have you backbone enough in you to be faithful if all others were faithless? Is there the real grit about you? Could you dare to be Daniels and, “dare to stand alone”? Can you fight a losing battle? Can you stand in the gap and be the last of a few heroic men who will defend the pass against all comers?