Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3047
“If the righteous are scarcely saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?” 1 Peter 4:18.
SOME people suppose that it is a very easy thing to be saved, but our Lord said, “Strive (“Agonize” is the original word) to enter in at the strait gate, for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in and shall not be able.” When men hear a simple Gospel sermon of which the pith and marrow is the great soul-saving message, “Believe and live,” they say, “If it is such a simple matter, will not all believe?” But the Prophet Isaiah spoke not so, for his sad inquiry was, “Who has believed our report (“our doctrine” is the marginal reading)?” Faith seems so easy that one might ask, “Where will it not be found? But our Savior thought not so, for He asked, “When the Son of Man comes, shall He find faith on the earth?” He who knows where to look for it and who has the quickest eyes to discern it, asks whether He shall be able to find, anywhere on the earth, that scarce thing called faith—“the faith of God’s elect.” Believe me that though “the way of holiness” is so plain that “the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein,” yet on account of the hardness of our hearts, it is no easy thing for any of us to enter that way and to continue in it until it leads us to our everlasting Home above.
I do not intend to keep strictly to my text, but to give you the meaning of it in this way. First, here is a fact stated— “The righteous are scarcely saved.” Then, secondly, there is an inference drawn from that fact—if they are truly saved with great difficulty, “where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?” When we have considered that inference, we shall take the liberty to draw two other inferences which may afford us further instruction.
I. First, then, HERE IS A FACT STATED—“The righteous are scarcely saved.” That is to say, they are only saved with great difficulty. This is not because there is any deficiency in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, or any lack of efficacy in His atoning Sacrifice, or in His intercession for transgressors. God be thanked that there is no difficulty there! It is not through any lack of power to save on the part of the Holy Spirit. Nor is it through any failure of God’s faithfulness that “the righteous” are only saved with great difficulty. But it is for two reasons which I will now give you.
The first reason is, because of the strictness of Divine rule. Read the first clause of the verse preceding our text— “The time is come that judgment must begin at the House of God.” And that judgment is so severe that even “the righteous are scarcely saved.” When Christ comes even to His own people, He comes to purge and purify them. The Prophet Malachi wrote concerning His first coming, “He is like a refiner’s fire, and like fullers’ soap; and He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; and He shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness.” John the Baptist said, concerning Christ, “He that comes after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: He shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit, and with fire: whose fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly purge His floor, and gather His wheat into the garner; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” Judgment must always “begin at the House of God” and there is, as good Archbishop Leighton very properly says, both “equity and congruity in such an arrangement.” There is equity in it, for Christians profess to be better than others and so they ought to be. They say they are regenerate, so they ought to be regenerate. They say that they are a holy people, separated unto Christ, so they ought to be holy and separate from sinners, as He was. It is right that where there is a high calling and an honored name, there should be a life proving the accuracy of these two things. So, when God begins to test that which professes to be gold and silver, who can say that He does not begin His testing at the right place, and with the right material? There is also a congruity or fitness in this arrangement.
The Church of God is His house—and where does a man begin cleansing and reforming? Why, in his own house, of course! He might perhaps feel that he must have some filth in the farmyard, but not in his own sitting-room! There may be much evil abroad that he cannot remove, yet he can begin cleaning up at home. If we want to do any good in reforming the world, the very first duty for each of us is to begin reforming at home— and the Lord, when He means to clear away the dross, begins at home by setting up His “fire in Zion and His furnace in Jerusalem.”
The tests to which God subjects those who profess to be His people are not easy ones. When His fan is in His hand, woe be unto those who are “like the chaff which the wind drives away.” The Lord says, by the mouth of the Prophet Amos, “I will sift the house of Israel among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth.” Nor shall an atom of chaff be left in the sieve. When Omnipotence and Omniscience unite to sift the chaff from the wheat, you may depend upon it that the sifting will be thoroughly done! There is also the testing by fire. And if any are not able to endure that test, “reprobate silver shall men call them because the Lord has rejected them.” Then God will weigh us—we shall be put into the balances of the sanctuary and if we are found wanting, how terrible it will be! We often judge by appearances, but God looks at the heart. We may be deceived by the outward profession, but God sees what is within. He looks for the Truth in our inward parts and in our hidden parts there must be the true Wisdom or else we are not saved.