Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2974
“My Grace is sufficient for you.” 2 Corinthians 12:9.
LET no Christian imagine that he will ever have immunity from trouble while he continues in the body. Should you be favored with visions and Revelations of the Lord, caught up to the third Heaven, admitted into Paradise and privileged to hear things which it were not lawful for a man to utter, conclude not that you have escaped the rod— rather expect that such high privilege will need heavy affliction to balance it! If God has given you the great sail and the prosperous wind, He will also give you the heavy ballast to keep your keel deep in the stream. Do not expect, dear Brothers and Sisters, that because you have been strengthened in the faith, you will therefore be loosened from the burden of the flesh—neither because you may have been the means of strengthening others, that, therefore, trouble will be light for you. Even into your ship the deep waters may come. Think not that it is so water-tight that the billows will only dash against it. You may be called to feel heaviness—your faith may be all but staggered and your soul may have to cry out from the depths because of the slender strength you possess.
The Lord has such ways of chastising His children as to make them feel. We think, some of us, after we have suffered a certain amount of trouble, that we have been so conditioned to it we shall no longer be moved as we used to be. The Apostle Paul had been beaten with rods, tossed about in shipwrecks, yet he had suffered hunger and thirst and nakedness till he felt that, if any man had a right to glory after the flesh, he had. Still, even he found that the Lord had a way of getting at his heart and making it smart. He had thorns in the flesh, messengers of Satan that did most effectually buffet him. We, too, must have trials—briars of a kind that shall come right home to us and touch us in our bones and in our flesh.
Neither let us think, dear Friends, that even the privilege of the Mercy Seat will shield us from the rod. When chastened we run to prayer, but we shall not, therefore, escape the chastisement! Paul, an Apostle, prays. He who certainly must have understood “the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man,” beseeches the Lord three times, yet the thorn in the flesh was not blunted, much less removed! He still had to suffer as he had done before. Oh, how often we think we can use the Mercy Seat for our own lust! Is not prayer too sacred a thing for us to make a selfish use of it? When God gives us the key of His storehouse and bids us take what we will, shall we use even a single promise of His Word merely to pander to our own desires and to enable us to escape from enduring hardness as good soldiers of Jesus Christ? If we thus misuse prayer, we may be excused for it, but we shall not be accepted in it. Even Paul is non-suited when he asks ease for the flesh. He gets no release from trouble. He gets something better, however, for the Lord says to Him, “My Grace is sufficient for you; for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Thus, Beloved, we must reckon upon the adversities that are sure to befall us. “In the world you shall have tribulation.” This is one of the Divine shalls and wills. The Lord will chasten those whom He loves and His children shall suffer—you can be sure of that. It is as sure as any other thing in the world, “You shallhave tribulation.”
I. To those who have proved the truth of this declaration, the text will be peculiarly sweet. THERE ARE CERTAIN SORE VEXATIONS OF SPIRIT FOR WHICH GRACE IS THE ONLY BALM. The Lord does not say, “My Providence shall protect you.” Nothing of the kind—Divine Grace is the remedy in this case and, I take it, this was because the Apostle was suffering in the very core and center of his being. There are many trials, the grief of which may be fully
relieved by ordinary Providences—but these that come and wound a man to the quick—require Grace as their only effectual balm.
Past experience of Grace is of no availin such a case. It is presentGrace that is promised in the text and it is present Grace that is required. When we have sometimes been bowed down and walked in darkness, and seen no light, we have called to remembrance our song in the night and our spirit has made diligent search—but that very song has been turned into howling in the remembrance and all that we thought we felt, and thought we knew has vanished from before our eyes! I do not know how it has been with you, but there have been times with me when I could set no value upon my past experience. The devil has said it was all a delusion, my faith mere presumption, my hope mere excitement—and all my joys but the effusion of animal spirits. There will be a time when he will bid you look back and all the way will look like the Valley of the Shadow of Death. You cannot see one hopeful sign in it! And you turn over the books of experience and read them, and you think, “Well, my spot is not the spot of God’s children, and my footprints do not seem to be at all like the footprints of the flock.” I tell you, if you have ever done business in deep waters, you have found that anchors at home are of no use in a storm—and that the anchor which stood so well a year ago, if it is left at home on shore—is of no use to you now in the storm! It is present Grace, nothing but present Grace, that will do now! You have eaten all the cold meats and you have brought out from the cupboard every moldy crust you can find—and now your soul is reduced to the very last and faints within you. And now you must cry to your God in your trouble and get present Grace in this, your time of need!