Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2541
“I will trust and not be afraid.” Isaiah 12:2.
I saw this text advertised as being printed in colors and it was called, “Mr. Moody’s Text.” When I saw him yesterday, I asked him how it was his text any more than it is mine. He said that he was sure he did not know—he never called it his text, so far as he knew. Somebody may have thought it a very proper text for him and so it is, but I lay claim to the text, too, and I should advise every Christian to say, “That is my text also.” I would be very glad if some who are not Christians should be brought, by the Grace of God, into the bonds of the Covenant and should be able to lay hold on this text, and so say, “I will trust and not be afraid.” I told Mr. Moody that if it belonged to nobody else in particular, it certainly was mine. He said, “How so?” “Well,” I replied, “I told my people the meaning of that text some time ago.” I said to you, dear Friends, that you might get to Heaven by the Free Grace train if you did but get on board it anywhere, but that it was always advisable, if you could, to travel first-class. I pointed out the third-class carriage to you. This is it— “What time I am afraid, I will trust in the Lord.” If you get in there, you will go all right to the journey’s end, but it is much better to be where there are nice, soft cushions to sit upon. This is the first-class carriage—“I will trust and not be afraid.” You are no safer, I suppose, in one carriage than in the other, but, certainly, you are much more comfortable in this first-class carriage! “I will trust and not be afraid.”
Having told that story, I claim the text as being my own. However, it will be all the more mine by belonging to other people. I count that it is rather a narrowing of a man’s possessions when he cannot permit others to enjoy them without losing the enjoyment of them, himself. But it makes your treasure all the richer and the larger when everybody else may have it and yet you, yourself, may have none the less. So is it with this delightful text! I may say it. You may say it, my Brother, and you, my Sister. And you, venerable Sir, and you, juvenile Believer—you may each one say, by the Grace of God, “I will trust and not be afraid.”
The man, however, who dares to say it, and who ought to say it, is the man described in this remarkable chapter of Isaiah. “In that day you shall say, O Lord, I will praise You.” The man who can truly say, “I will trust and not be afraid,” is the man who from his heart praises God—the man who spends his breath and spends his life in magnifying the Most High. Then the Prophet goes on, “I will praise You: though You were angry with me.” So that the man who can say, “I will trust and not be afraid,” is the man who has felt something of the anger of God, one who has known what it is to come under the lash of the Law, but also who has realized what it is to be delivered from its iron grip. He who has never felt the burden of sin will, I think, never know the joy of faith. What has he to trust about? What cause is there for his being afraid when he does not see any sin in himself? But he who is consciously a sinner is the man who can say, “I will trust and not be afraid,” when the Lord has forgiven him his sin.
Isaiah proceeds, “Though You were angry with me, Your anger is turned away and You comforted me. Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid.” When your whole salvation is found in God, especially in God as He reveals Himself in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ—when Christ is your Savior and has saved you from your sin then, indeed, may you say, “I will trust and not be afraid.”
It is in the hope that I am addressing many persons here of this character that I have taken this text, “I will trust and not be afraid.” If I can, I am going to do four things with the text. First, I am going to twist the text. Secondly, to untwist it. Thirdly, to press it. And fourthly, to praise it.
I. First, then, I propose to do what you may think is a very horrible thing, and what, as a rule, I will not do. That is, I am going to TWIST THE TEXT.
Mark you, I shall not do this, myself—I only intend to tell you how a great many persons twist it. They use most of the same words, but they put them in the wrong position. For instance, one man says, “I will not trust and yet I will not be afraid.”He does not say, “I will trust and not be afraid,” but, “I will not trust and yet I will not be afraid. I am no Believer in Christ. I do not need any Free Grace Gospel. I need no mercy, for I am righteous, I have kept the Law. I shall not trust in Jesus and yet I shall not be afraid.” Alas, there are persons who do not say that in words, but, in effect, that is exactly what they say! They have no righteousness but their own and that is only filthy rags—yet they say that they are rich, increased in goods and have need of nothing. I heard of a man who wrote over his door these words, “Let no evil person enter here.” One of his neighbors remarked that if he carried out his own orders, he would never be able to go into his own house!