Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2703
“I pray not that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil.” John 17:15.
THE text, as we observed on a former occasion, [Sermon #47, Volume 1—CHRIST’S PRAYER FOR HIS PEOPLE contains two prayers—a negative prayer and a positive prayer. First, there is the negative prayer—“I pray not that You should take them out of the world.” There are wise ends to be observed by their remaining here. It will ultimately increase their happiness in Heaven. It will give glory to God. It shall be the means of the conversion of others—therefore, “I pray not that you should take them out of the world,” but I do pray—and here comes the positive prayer—“that, while they are in it, ‘you should keep them from the evil.’”
I. Let us first, then, CONSIDER THE EVIL FROM WHICH CHRIST PRAYS THAT HIS PEOPLE MAY BE KEPT.
We have no hesitation in declaring that the only evil here intended is the evil of sin. It may be true that Jesus Christ pleads with His Father to preserve us from some of the direful afflictions which might be too much for our mortal frame to endure. It may be that, sometimes, the blows and attacks of the enemy are warded off by the arm of the intercession of Jesus. It may be that the great aegis of Almighty God is often held over our heads in matters of Providence to keep us from evil when we walk, and to guard us lest we dash our feet against a stone. We feel persuaded, however, that neither of these things is here intended, but that, “the evil,” so continually spoken of in Scripture, the evil pre-eminently here meant, is sin and nothing else. “I pray that you should keep them from the evil.”
Afflictions are often beneficial, therefore Christ does not plead that we should be kept entirely from this kind of evil. Trial brings us to His feet and gives new life to prayer, therefore Christ has not asked that this bittersweet might not be given to us. Death itself, which seems an evil, is a good thing for Believers, so Christ does not ask that we may not die. The petition He puts up here for His people is, “I pray that You should keep them from the evil”—the special evil, the particular, the deadly evil of sin.
Let us here remark that sin is an unqualified evil I t is the evil without the mitigation of any good in it. In sin there can be no good—it is evil, only evil and that continually. The lowest form of sin is “the evil.” The highest is “the evil” more fully developed. Sin in an angel was “the evil,” for it turned him into a devil. Sin in Eden was “the evil,” for it plucked up the fair trees by the roots and blasted all their fruits—and sent Adam out to till the ground from where he was taken. Sin is always an evil—it brings no profit to anyone. It shall not profit a man if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul, and in especially the Christian it is evil, nothing but evil. Sin can never benefit him, it is an evil, only an evil, a powerful evil and a dreadful evil—it is unmitigated evil—it is “the evil.”
It is true, out of evil God brings good. Sometimes the very sins of God’s people are overruled so as to preserve them from some greater sin, but that does not destroy “the evil.” If God sends out bears from the woods to execute his commission, and they slay the mocking children, they are still bears. And if sin is sometimes made to be the means of honoring God, yet sin is sin, notwithstanding any purpose that God may accomplish by it. And no false preaching can ever make us
believe any doctrine which would take away the deadly character which by right belongs to sin. It is always hurtful and dangerous.
The Christian who trusts that, by any one sin, he may keep himself out of difficulty, or get himself out of difficulty, makes a terrible mistake. This cannot bring you good. “But,” you say, “I am in real difficulties. My creditors are pressing me, what shall I do? If I could draw that accommodation bill, or forge that note, there might be some good in it.” There cannot be any good in it! Sin is evil! It is “the evil.” It is “the evil” without a single particle of goodness. It is “the evil” without any mitigation whatever. “Oh,” says another, “if I were to do such-and-such a thing—it is but a little evil—I should then prosper in business! And then I could dedicate myself to God and serve Him better! And so, out of the evil, I could bring a good. The end would justify the means.” No! If the means are bad, they are bad. If the means are evil, they are evil. Sin is sin and nothing but sin—and however there may, sometimes, appear to be temporary advantages in it—it is still evil, and only evil. What though the noxious draught may sometimes stimulate the man and seem to make him mightier, it really weakens him—and it will ultimately destroy him. A man may fancy sin to be good for a time. It may patch him up in respectability and make him stand a little more favorably in the eyes of worldlings, but the house repaired with such rotten material as that shall fall, notwithstanding all that is done to prop it up! All sin is unmitigated evil, and the only name we will give to it is, “evil.” Let the monster plead as it may and ask us to call it good, we charge it with having slain our Lord—and we condemn it as an evil to be hated and avoided. A serpent may have beauteous blue hues upon his scales, but he is a deadly thing and is to be crushed to the earth.