It is absolutely certain, dear friends, that whatever our personal characters may be, we shall have to know, by practical experience, the meaning of the word trouble. Saint or sinner, “man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.” The road to heaven is rough, and the path to hell is not always smooth. There are some tribulations which belong specially to the people of God, yet it is also true that “many sorrows shall be to the wicked.” If a man, trying to escape from sorrow, should take the wings of the morning, and fly to the uttermost parts of the sea, he would find that sorrow was even there upon the sea. Should he go to the frozen regions of the North, he would find sorrow there, for there have some of the fondest human hopes been wrecked. Let him journey to the sultry South, and trouble shall pursue him there, for plagues, fevers, and miasma haunt that region, and the gates of death are near. Until we mount to heaven, we shall never be able to escape from sorrow and sighing; only there shall we obtain joy and gladness, when our sombre companions shall have fled away for ever.

Since, then, dear friends, the stream of sorrow is here, and we cannot make it flow in any other direction, what shall we do with it? Let us try to put it to profitable uses; let us lift up our hearts in prayer to God that all our sorrows may be sanctified, that, with all other things, they may work together for our lasting good, and that we, who are the children of God, may be perfected in the image of Christ according to the divine purpose. Let us remember, however, that sorrow will not of itself be beneficial to us. It is possible to endure afflictions on earth, and afterwards to endure eternal damnation in hell. Sinners may go from beds of languishing to beds of flame, from toil and poverty here to torment and despair hereafter. There is nothing at all in sorrow that can burn out sin; there is no power in human suffering to remove the wrath of God.

I shall commence my discourse with this very simple remark, that, in their times of distress, God’s people have often found very great profit.

Suffering is one of the things which is written in the covenant of grace as a blessing. The rod was promised to us when we became the children of God, and we cannot escape it; and I think the poet Cowper was right when he said that “the true-born child of God” would not escape it if he might. The distress of believers, when it is sanctified to them, loosens their hold upon this world. Trials cut the ropes which fasten our souls to earthly things, and so enable us to mount; they file the chains which, as on the eagle’s foot, will not let her spread her wings, and soar upward toward the sun. Trouble, like a sharp spade, digs up the earth that is about our roots, and then we bring forth the more fruit. Were it not for the thorns in our nest, we should be so content with its soft lining that we should sit in it till we died; but the sharp thorns prick our breasts, and then we turn our eye aloft, and learn to try our wings, ready for the time when they shall have fully grown, and we shall mount to joys above.

Afflictions also are often to the benefit of believers in leading them to search for sin. Our trials should be search-warrants, sent to us from God that we may search and find out the secret evil that is within us, the offence that we have hidden, the lie that is in our right hand. You know, beloved, that it is not an easy thing to bring us to self-examination. We are afraid of it; we are too apt to take things as they seem to be, without testing and trying them to see what they really are; but when the consolations of God grow small with us, then we say, “Is there any secret sin within us?” A rough wind blows through the forest, and the rotten branches creak, and are torn from the oak, where else they would have become a nest for all sorts of destructive insects, and a centre of decay for the whole tree. So, our afflictions often drive away some besetting sins, some darling propensities, which otherwise we might have carried in our bosom till they had done us grievous damage.

Do you not also know, dear friends, how trials give new life to prayer? Do we ever pray so well as when we feel the prickings of our Father’s sword? He never wounds us so severely as to kill us, but he does sometimes just gently probe us to wake us up from our lethargy. Oh, what fervent prayers we offer when in the furnace; and I may add, oh, what grateful songs we sing when we come out! There is more life, I do think, in one’s piety in times of sorrow than at any other season. I do not wish to be laid aside from pulpit labour, but I must confess that I have often felt unusual spiritual power when coming up to preach to you after a season of sickness; and there have been times when I have heard some of you say, “Our minister speaks more sweetly now than he did before he was laid aside.” Yes, the olives must go into the press if the oil is to be squeezed out of them, and the grapes must be trodden upon with loving feet before the wine flows forth from them. The file must be used upon us to bring out the true quality of the metal. There is no hope that we shall ever be made into the much fine gold unless we are often put into the crucible, and unless that crucible be put into the midst of the glowing coals. So I say that we get much good from our trials.

Have you not also found, dear friends, that trials make your faith grow stronger? We, who are but striplings in the Lord’s army, enlist very readily; we put the colours in our cap, and we think that we are going to do great things,-to stir up the Church, and to rout the world, the flesh, and the devil; but we soon find that we have to be drilled by the black sergeant, Affliction, and afterwards we have to march out to the battle of the warrior, “with confused noise, and garments rolled in blood;” and, by-and-by, after many a conflict, we become hardened veterans; and we, who might have turned our backs aforetime, if it had not been for trial, become bold as lions for the Lord our God. Brethren, there is no teaching, no ministry, even of the best-taught servant of God, that can do you such good as sanctified experience will. You must learn for yourselves; under that blessed schoolmaster, Mr. Affliction, must you study the sacred science of divinity; it is good to go to his school, for the lessons to be learnt there are so beneficial. One of his scholars wrote, “Before I was afflicted I went astray: but now have I kept thy word.”

We also get our sweetest comforts in the time of trouble. Do not mothers often give their children, in their seasons of sickness, tokens of love that they never give them when in health? I know that there are kisses of Jesu’s lips for his tried children that he gives not to those who are without trial. “He shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom;” then I would love to be a lamb, to ride so near to his heart;-“and shall gently lead those that are with young,” and it is well for us sometimes to feel those pains and weaknesses that we may have more of the gentle leadings of the tender Shepherd. I think it was Rutherford who said that, when Christ put him down in the cellar of affliction, he knew that he kept his wine there, and he groped about until he found the bottles, and then he drank, and was revived. Ah, there is rich wine of comfort in the lowest cellars of affliction when Christ puts us down there; even the joys of heaven will be all the sweeter because of our experiences of trial here, where we often sing,-

“Sweet affliction,

Thus to bring my Saviour near.”

Christ is superlatively sweet to us, and the next sweetest thing in all the world is Christ’s dear cross. He is himself most precious; but next to the kisses of his lips are the blows, the love-pats of his pierced hand.

Now I advance another step, and remind you that, very often, through the grace of God, ungodly persons have had reason to bless the Lord for their afflictions.

Not unfrequently have I heard a story of this kind from a man who has passed the prime of life, whose garments bear evidence, though he still looks respectable, that he is one who has seen many sorrows and trials, and who carries on his brow the marks of the ploughshare of grief. He has come to unite in fellowship with the church, and he begins telling the story of his conversion, which is something like this:-“I was once a flourishing tradesman; I had a large business, and was a wealthy man; but, alas! I was foolish; worse than that, I was wicked; I misspent my time, I delighted in the ways of sin, and became a profligate. My companions thought me generous, and I did not wish to be less than they thought me to be; so I wasted my substance in riotous living. My business suffered; and, at last, there came a crash. All I had went where all must go when a man squanders his time and money as I squandered mine. I became poor; I had not previously known what it was to eat the bread of dependence, but I did eat it for a few months. Friends assisted me for a time, but they grew tired of doing so, and I was cast off by the world; and I felt, when any looked coldly upon me, that I deserved it. I have been a fool, sir, I know that I have; but it was then, one cold, pitiless night, when there was only one place where I could find shelter for my head,-that place was the pauper’s last refuge;-it was then that I thought upon my ways, and lifted my eyes to heaven, and breathed the prayer, ‘God be merciful to me a sinner.’ ” The man has told me that he blesses God for his poverty, for that was the means of bringing him to Christi; and since he has come to know the Lord, he has thought it a thousand mercies that he was thus brought very low, for if he had not been, his proud spirit would never have been broken, and he would never have been humbled before the Lord.

And some of you, my sisters, know that you have told me and the church your story. You were happy mothers in your households, but you feared not the Lord; you had your children around you, and you and your husband took what you called “your pleasure” on the Sabbath day, for you had no fear of God before your eyes. But, by-and-by, one of your little ones was taken ill. You watched, with anxious care, the pale cheek as it grew paler still, but grim Death took your darling from you. Again his shafts flew, and a second one was taken, and your soul was melted because of heaviness. There is one here who had four children taken away in succession, till, at last, the mother’s agonized soul, bereaved of all earthly comfort, could go to no one else but Christ; and when she went to him, she found in him what was better than ten sons,-his love, his pardon, his acceptance, his free gift of eternal life.

Ah, brethren and sisters, there have been many who have thus, by a series of bereavements, through the sanctifying influence of the Holy Spirit, been brought to know the Lord. I need not stay to mention instances of which I am constantly hearing, and I believe that the black angel of distress has brought as many to Christ as the bright angel of tender mercy; in fact, if you look well at the black angel, as I have called him, you will see that he is not black, but exceedingly bright, for there is a gracious ministry in those loving sorrows, there is an angelic kindness in those loving cruelties (as some term them) by which God doth sometimes bring hardened sinners to himself.

But now I come to the main point of my discourse, which is that, although distress is often blessed to God’s people, and is frequently sanctified to the conversion of sinners, our text is a notable proof that there is nothing in trial itself which will necessarily soften the heart, and make a man repent: “In the time of his distress did he trespass yet more against the Lord: this is that king Ahaz.”

If further proof were needed that trouble, affliction, sickness, and familiarity with death necessarily softened the heart, then those people who have most to do with these things would have the tenderest hearts; but it is not so. Think of the men who have to deal with the dead. Where will you find anywhere, as a class, a more hardened set of men than an undertaker’s men often are? I know that anyone, who is well acquainted with them, must have observed how they joke over a corpse, and make mirth over the death of their fellow-creatures, regarding a fever rather as a blessing which brings them employment than as a calamity which takes away the husband from the wife, or the parent from the children. I do not speak without my book in this case, and it is very much the same with other people. I think I said, one day, that, if a man or a woman were not converted before they became pew-openers at a church or a chapel, it was probable that they never would be converted, and I am still of the same opinion. I once said that I thought even reporters of sermons, if they did not know the Lord before they undertook that work, would very likely fail to get any good out of the sermon; and, therefore, it is always a great joy to me when I know that those who have any share in the preparation of the sermons with a view to their publication have realized the power of the truth in their own hearts; so that, even while engaged in the mechanical operations connected with reporting and printing the sermons, their souls drink in something of the sweetness of the truth which is afterwards to be read by others.

Probably, however, the truth of the text will be best illustrated by a Scriptural instance. Look at Pharaoh; was any man ever more troubled than he was? All the powers of land, and water, and sky united to plague him. It seemed as if all the frogs in the world had made Egypt their rendezvous; and the locusts, and the lice, and the flies, and the murrain, and the sore blains, and the hail, and the thick darkness;-and though all these plagues came upon Pharaoh, he still hardened his heart, and would not let the people go. Affliction did not soften him; on the contrary, it hardened him; and the case of Ahaz is another instance of the same evil spirit, for the more trials came to him, the more did he trespass against the Lord. The children of Israel, too, though they were smitten many times, yet revolted again and again. They were hunted about by marauders, and delivered up to their enemies; their crops were devoured of locusts, famine and pestilence came upon them; but, for all that, they turned not unto the Lord, but hardened their hearts against him, and were a stiff-necked generation, even as they are unto this day.

However, I need not go on beating round the bush, for, if further proofs that sorrow does not necessarily soften are needed, there are plenty of such proofs here at this moment. There is that sailor over yonder, he knows that he is a great deal worse man than he was three or four years ago. He had more prickings of conscience then than he has now; yet it is not many months since he escaped from shipwreck. He thought the angry deep must surely swallow him up, so he cried unto God in his time of trouble, and said, “Save me, O God, for the waters have come in unto my soul!” God spared his life, but the trial he then endured had no beneficial effect upon him; and, as I have said, he is a worse man now than he was years ago. Then there is that man yonder, whose business has been going down: what effect has that had upon him? Why, he is growing harder and harder, and is even cursing God for what he calls his ill luck. In trying to improve his position, he is only plunging deeper into the mire, and he will be head over heels in the morass, presently, unless the almighty grace of God shall deliver him. But the man is not softened in spirit by all that he has had to endure. That which would have softened him had he been as wax has hardened him because his nature is like clay. May God yet have mercy on him, for I plainly perceive that his trials by themselves will be of no use to him.

And you, too, who have come creeping out to this service;-you have been so ill that hospital after hospital has turned you away as incurable; the doctors say that nothing more can be done for you; and you have come limping in here, though you can scarcely keep your seat for weariness for you are very ill and weak;-yet your unhumbled spirit is as proud as though your ribs were made of iron and your heart were strong as steel. If you should be chastened any more, you would only revolt more and more. You have already been smitten until your whole head is sick, and your whole heart is faint; from the crown of your head to the sole of your feet there is no soundness in you, for you have become, as the result of God’s chastisements, a mass of wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores; yet still is sin as strongly entrenched within your soul as ever it was. What more shall the Lord do unto you? Shall he give you up as hopeless? Shall he make you as Admah? Shall he set you as Zeboim? Shall he say concerning you, “He is joined unto his idols; let him alone”? What else remaineth to be done for you when all this affliction and trial will not break your heart?

I might go on pointing out you who are like king Ahaz, for my Master knows all about you, and he knows how to direct my tongue so that I shall describe you. I feel a great yearning of heart, the throes of strong convulsions in my soul over some of you who are here. I know that I have a special message from God for some whom I am now addressing; who and where they are, the Lord knows; I do not, but I pray that my message may now be accepted by them. As the Lord my God liveth, before whom I stand, if thou turn not at his rebuke, O soul, if this last affliction shall not humble thee, he will dash thee in pieces like a potter’s vessel, and break thee with a rod of iron! “Turn ye, turn ye, for why will ye die?” Why will you draw destruction down upon your own head? Why will you stain your garments with your own blood? Wherefore will you dash yourself to pieces upon the bosses of Jehovah’s buckler? Why will you run upon the edge of his sword? Why will you leap into the fires of hell? Why will you ruin your souls for ever? Pause, I entreat you; a brother’s love bids you pause. Thou, who art like “that king Ahaz” who, in the time of his distress, trespassed yet more against the Lord, I pray thee to stop and consider, lest, at thy next step, thy feet should hang over the awful darkness of the pit, and thy soul be precipitated into the depths eternal!

I have thus, I hope, come somewhat near the mark at which I am aiming, and I am getting to speak right home to those who have had afflictions and trials, but are growing worse, rather than better, notwithstanding all that has happened to them. I will turn from them to speak to some of you, who have the notion that you will repent and believe in Christ some day, but you will not repent and believe in Christ just yet. You have not made up your minds that you will go to hell; oh, no, you mean to be saved one of these days; you have not decided when it shall be; but, still, you do mean it to happen one of these days. Your secret thought is that, one of these days, you will be obedient to the heavenly vision. You talk to yourselves in some such fashion as this, “I shall be laid aside one day, perhaps it may not be until I grow old; and when I am ill, I shall have time to turn the matter over calmly and quietly. I have heard my friends say, concerning some who had lived very bad lives, that they hoped it was all right with them at the last; therefore, may I not hope that it will be all right with me?” Friend, I want to give you a warning word; perhaps my meeting you here, and talking specially to you for a little while, may be the means of your eternal salvation. What makes you imagine that a time of sickness is a suitable time for repentance? Do you not think that you will have quite enough to do to bear your pains of body, without having to think of the state of your soul? When your head is aching, you cannot properly attend even to your earthly business; so how can you hope to attend to your soul’s business when your head and your heart will both be aching? You find that your worldly concerns need a healthy mind and body to conduct them properly; so do you think that, when the mind is becoming weak through senile decay and physical infirmity, that then will be a fitting time to think of these momentous and eternal realities?

In many diseases, I believe that repentance and faith are scarcely possible, for some of them bring such a lethargy of spirit that the mind is hardly able to act at all. There are, doubtless, many persons who are alive, but who, for all practical purposes, are dead long before they actually die. You know, too, how often the very thought of death is so harassing to an unbeliever that he can hardly think of sin. A murderer may repent that he has been brought to the gallows, yet not repent of the murder that brought him there; just as, on their death-bed, many repent of hell, but not of sin. I fear that, often, the sense of the wrath to come gets to be so vivid, and so real, that sin hardly comes into the reckoning; and remember, friend, that it is not repentance of hell that will save you, but repentance of sin;-not repentance of the punishment, but repentance of the evil deed itself, a sincere hatred of the very pleasure which sin would bring. O sirs, take my word for it, and I think that, if there were physicians here, they would certify that I am speaking the truth when I say that there are other things to do, on your death-bed, than to talk of “making your peace with God.” I am uttering a solemn truth, but it is one that must be spoken; there may have been some few persons who have been saved on a death-bed, but my own conviction is that they have been very, very, very, very, very few. We only read, in Scripture, of one who was saved at the last,-the dying thief on the cross; and it has been well said that there was one that none might despair, but only one that none might presume. I do not know that there ever was another besides the dying thief who was called by grace at the eleventh hour; I repeat that I do not know this. I do not say that there have not been any, I hope there have been many, but I do not know it. I have no revelation concerning it, there is nothing in this blessed Book about it; only this I know, there was one, and therefore I hope there have been more; but since I only know of that one, I would warn you not to put any confidence in a repentance that may possibly come at the last. You may be saved on your death-bed; but I think there is every probability that you, who have loved sin so long, will hug it to the last. I do not see any reason why you should turn your backs suddenly on your former course; if there be any such reason, let it operate upon you now. Surely it should have as much force upon your conscience, at this moment, while you are capable of weighing the whole matter calmly and deliberately, as it will have when you lie tossing on your bed, and your judgment has lost a great part if not all of its former vigour. May God bring you to Christ now; but do not, I pray you, be dreaming about a death-bed on which you may never lie, or of a repentance which you may never experience. There was a man who was an awful swearer, and whenever anybody spoke to him about his not being saved, he used to say, “Oh, well, when my turn comes to die, I shall just say, ‘Lord, have mercy upon me,’ and that will be enough.” It happened that, one dark night, when going home on horseback drunk, his horse leaped the parapet of a high bridge, and horse and rider fell right into the water; and the last word that the man was heard to utter was an oath, so beyond all doubt he plunged into a hopeless eternity. It is quite possible that you will never have the opportunity to breathe a dying prayer; or if you could have such an opportunity, it is quite possible that you would have no inclination to utter it. Remember that “now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” May God, in his sovereign mercy, turn you to himself now!

Now I come back to you, who have had many trials, but who have not been bettered by them. My friend, over yonder, you do not often hear a minister preach the Word; and, therefore, now that I have you here, let me deal very plainly and faithfully with you. Why do you think that your trials were sent to you? I have shown you that, often, distress has been blessed to others. Now, supposing you have had an experience which has been blessed to others, but it has been no blessing to you, what is the inference? If a man takes a piece of quartz, in which he thinks there is some gold, and puts it through the usual processes for extracting gold, and when he has done that, sees that there is no likelihood of finding gold in it, what is he likely to do with it? Why, methinks, ere long, when he has tried all the plans he can think of, he will throw it away, and have nothing more to do with it; and is it not likely that God will soon throw you away as utterly worthless? Did you not say, the other night, that you wished God would let you alone? You would not have come in to this service if you had thought that I should speak so pointedly and personally to you, would you? You would like to see every church, and chapel, and mission-hall destroyed; you would like to have no Sundays, and no religious people, because they plague you, they get in your way, they stick pins into your pillow, they will not leave you alone to sleep the sleep of death.

But do you not see that the fact that you want to be let alone is itself a proof of your reprobate mind? God is beginning to let you alone, I am afraid; inasmuch as you are wishing to be let alone, I am afraid that awful curse will come upon you; and, possibly, it will come upon you soon. Should your present condition continue much longer, I can tell you what will happen to you, you will become an avowed atheist, you will deny even the existence of God. You may even become an open blasphemer, or you may become unconscious of any spiritual emotion. Your conscience will never prick you, and you will go on sinning with a high hand until you come to die. Perhaps, even then, no alarm or terror will dsiturb your false peace of mind; even when you dip your feet in the chilly stream of the river of death, you will be self-deceived to the last; but oh, sir, what a change will come over you when you once get into the world of eternal realities! When, at last, you realize that you are a lost soul, and that you have for ever to anticipate the wrath to come, what will you do then? O man, how will the blood boil in your veins, and your nerves become burning tracks for the wheels of pain to travel on! God help you! God save you! Only he can do this, for I see the dread forecast of the flames of hell in you when you begin to ask God to let you alone in your sin.

“Well,” says one, “like that king Ahaz, I have transgressed yet more and more against the Lord notwithstanding all my distress; but God, who knows all things, knows that I would be saved if I could. While you were singing that hymn just now, I thought I would act upon it; I said in my heart,-

“ ‘I can but perish if I go;

“I am resolved to try;

For if I stay away I know,

I must for ever die.’ ”

Dear friend, give me your hand; I feel that I may rejoice over you, for if God the Holy Ghost has put it into your heart to say, “I am resolved to try;” or, better still, “I am resolved to trust Jesus Christ as my Saviour; though he slay me, I will trust in him;”-depend upon it, he will not slay you; he would not do so even if you were the blackest of sinners, one who had sinned till you had become the vilest of all offenders. Jesus casts out none who come to him by faith. Do, I pray you, now say in your soul, “God helping me, I will now come to him; and who can tell whether there may not be a harp in heaven even for me, and a crown of glory for me? I trust that I may yet stand with all the blood-washed host before the throne of God above, and join in singing the everlasting song of praise to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; and even here on earth, I may be among the children of God, I may be forgiven, I may be saved, I may be accepted in the Beloved.” If thou talkest thus, and meanest all that thou sayest, I say unto thee, not only that this may be the case with thee, but that it may be the case with thee this very hour.

“Oh! believe the promise true,

God to you his Son has given.”

A loving Father waits with arms outstretched to welcome the returning prodigal to his heart. Jesus waits by the fountain filled with his precious blood to wash you from all your sinful stains. The Holy Spirit is working in you even now; ’tis he who bids you come. Let not Satan persuade you that it is too late for you to come to Jesus; it is never too late while the messenger of mercy continues to speak to you. Let not the devil convince you that you are too sinful to be saved; often, the greatest sinners are the first to be saved. If the devil tells you that you are an extraordinary sinner, tell him that Christ is such an extraordinary Saviour that he can save all sorts of sinners, ordinary and extraordinary too. Say not in your heart that you cannot be saved; for, high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are God’s thoughts above your thoughts, and his ways above your ways. My poor friend, if thou feelest thy need of a Saviour, join with me, and with all the people of God here in singing this verse; sing it from your heart, and the great transaction’s done,-

“Nothing in my hands I bring:

Simply to thy cross I cling;

Naked, come to thee for dress;

Helpless, look to thee for grace;

Foul, I to the fountain fly;

Wash me, Saviour, or I die.”

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-503, 473, 514.

Exposition by C. H. Spurgeon.*

2 THESSALONIANS 1, and 2:1-4.

Chapter 1 Verses 1, 2. Paul, and Silvanus, and Timotheus, unto the church of the Thessalonians in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ Grace unto you, and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

All nations have their special forms of salutation, and this is the Christian’s greeting to his fellow-Christians, “Grace unto you, and peace.” How much there is in this prayer! “Grace”-the free favour of God, the active energy of the divine power; and “peace”-reconciliation to God, peace of conscience, peace with all men. My brethren, what better things could I desire for you, and what better things could you wish for your best beloved friends than these, “Grace unto you, and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ”?

3. We are bound to thank God always for you, brethren,

We do not feel this bond as much as we ought; we often feel ourselves bound to grumble and complain, but I question whether we think enough about being bound to praise God; and if we do not thank God as we ought for ourselves, it is little marvel if we are very slack in the duty of thanking him for others. Herein, then, let us imitate this devout apostle, and let us consider ourselves bound to thank God always for our brethren.

3-7. As it is meet, because that your faith groweth exceedingly, and the charity of every one of you all toward each other aboundeth; so that we ourselves glory in you in the churches of God for your patience and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations that ye endure: which is a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God, that ye may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which ye also suffer: seeing it is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you; and to you who are troubled rest with us,-

You will perhaps say that this command is more easily given than carried out; and yet, my brethren, the grace of God always enables us to perform what the precept of God commands. “You who are troubled rest with us.” If you can get even a partial glimpse of the glory that is to follow your trouble; if you can see Christ suffering with you, and realize your union with him; if the blessed Spirit, who pledges himself to be with all the Lord’s people, shall be with you, you will find it no hard thing thus to rest: “You who are troubled rest with us,”-

7. When the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels,

This rest, then, it seems, is to be given to us mainly when Christ shall come with his mighty angels.

8, 9. In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: who shall be punished with ever-lasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power;

I wonder what those persons, who say that it is not the duty of men to believe the gospel, make of this passage. Paul writes that those who “obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ shall be punished with everlasting destruction.” Then, clearly, the gospel demands and commands man’s obedience, and those who will not believe it shall be punished, not only for their other sins, but for this as their chief and damning fault, that they would not believe on the Lord Jesus Christ as set before them in the gospel of his grace.

10. When he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe-

Which passage means, I suppose, that as Christ will be admired in his own person, so his glory, reflected in all his children, will be a subject of admiration to the whole intelligent universe. The saints of God shall be so pure, so bright, such trophies of the Redeemer’s power to save, that he shall be admired in them. We know that, in God’s great temple of the universe, everything doth speak of his glory; and so, in the great spiritual temple of his Church, every separate saint shall show forth the glory of Christ.

10, 11. (Because our testimony among you was believed) in that day. Wherefore also we pray always for you, that our God would count you worthy of this calling, and fulfil all the good pleasure of his goodness, and the work of faith with power:

Ministers should be much in prayer for their people. When John Welsh’s wife found him on the ground with his eyes red with weeping, and she found that he had been there supplicating by the hour together, she asked him what ailed him, and he replied “Woman, I have three thousand souls to care for, and I wot not how they all prosper; therefore must I wrestle with God for them all.” Oh, that we felt more the weight of our ministry! It is, perhaps, the great fault of this age that so many, who do preach, yet preach with so little earnestness, and are not sufficiently alive to the value of immortal souls. Oh, that the Holy Spirit would make our ministry to be “the burden of the Lord” upon us!

12. That the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you, and ye in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Chapter 2 Verses 1, 2. Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand.

In his former Epistle to the Thessalonians, Paul had written as if he expected Christ to come immediately, and the people seem to have taken his words so literally as to have lived in expectation of Christ’s advent, and perhaps to have exhibited some degree of fear concerning it. He now calms their minds by telling them that Christ would not come until certain events had happened. The history of the world was not complete; the harvest of the Church was not ripe; neither had the sin of man and especially the “man of sin” become fully developed.

3, 4. Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.

If this “man of sin” be not the Pope of Rome, we cannot tell who is the antichrist. Certainly, if this description were put in the Hue-and-Cry, and we were police officers, we should at once arrest the Pope as the man whose character agreed with the warrant in our hands. What does he call himself? “Vicar of Christ on earth.” What does he do but set himself up to be adored and worshipped as though he were divine, making himself out to be the fountain and channel of all grace. Beloved, this “man of sin” has been revealed, now we may look for the coming of the Son of man; but the day and the hour when he shall come no man knoweth; no, and not even the angels of God.

JUDE’S DOXOLOGY

A Sermon

Published on Thursday, June 28th, 1906, delivered by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington,

On Lord’s-day Evening, November 7th, 1875.

“Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen.”-Jude 24, 25.

Paul’s writings abound in doxologies. You will find them in different forms scattered throughout all his Epistles. But he is not the only apostle who thus pauses to magnify the name of God. Here is “Judas, not Iscariot,” but the true-hearted Jude, who has been writing an Epistle which seems all ablaze with lightning, it burns so terribly against certain orders of sinners. Almost every word that Jude writes seems to have the roll of thunder in it; he appears to be more like the Haggai of the Old Testament than the Jude of the New. Yet he cannot close his short Epistle until he has included some ascription of praise to God.

Learn from this, dear friends, that the sin of man, if we are ever called to denounce it, should drive us to adore the goodness and glory of God. Sin defiles the world; so, after you have done your best to sweep it out, resolve that, inasmuch as man has dishonoured the name of God, you will seek to magnify that name. It is true that you cannot actually redress the wrong that has been done; but, at any rate, if the stream of sin has been increased, you may increase the stream of loyal and reverent praise. Take care that you do so. Jude is not satisfied with having rebuked the sons of men for their sin, so he turns round to glorify his God.

Observe that these doxologies, wherever we meet with them, are not all exactly the same. They are presented to the same God, and offered in the same spirit; but there are reasons given for the doxology in the one case which are not given in the other. Our morning text* told us of what God is able to do, and so does this. They both begin with praising God’s ability; but while Paul spoke about the greatness of that ability in what it could do for us, Jude speaks of the greatness of that ability in preserving us from falling, and perfecting us so that we may be presented faultless before the presence of the glory of God. Let us, in an adoring frame of mind, think over this sublime subject.

First, let us adore him who can keep us from falling.

I address myself, of course, now, only to God’s own people. When shall we ever see a congregation in which it will be needless to make such a remark as that? I cannot call upon some of you to adore God for keeping you from falling; for, alas! you have not yet learned to stand upright. God’s grace has never yet been accepted by you. You are not on the Rock of ages; you have not yet set out upon the heavenly pilgrimage. It is a wretched state for you to be in, in which you cannot worship him whom angels worship. It is a sad state of heart for any man to in, to be excluded-self-excluded-from the general acclamations of joy in the presence of God, because you feel no such joy, and cannot, therefore, unite in such acclamations.

But, to the people of God, I have to say this. Dear brothers and sisters, we need keeping; therefore, let us adore him who can keep us. As saved souls, we need keeping from final apostasy. “Oh!” saith one, “I thought you taught us that those who are once saved shall never finally apostatize.” I do believe that doctrine, and delight to preach it; yet it is true that the saved ones would apostatize, every one of them, if the Lord did not keep them. There is no stability in any Christian, in himself considered; it is the grace of God within him that enables him to stand. I believe that the soul of man is immortal, yet not in and of itself, but only by the immortality which God bestows upon it from his own essential immortality. So is it with the new life that is within us. It shall never perish; but it is only eternal because God continues to keep it alive. Your final perseverance is not the result of anything in yourself, but the result of the grace which God continues to give you, and of his eternal purpose which first chose you and of his almighty power which still keeps you alive. Ah, my brethren, the brightest saints on earth would fall into the lowest hell if God did not keep them from falling. Therefore, praise him, O ye stars that shine in the Church’s sky, for ye would go out with a noxious smell, as lamps do for want of oil, did not the Lord keep your heavenly flame burning. Glory be unto the Preserver of his Church who keeps his loved ones even to the end!

But there are other ways of falling beside falling finally and fatally. Alas, brethren! we are all liable to fall into errors of doctrine. The best-taught man, apart from divine guidance, is not incapable of becoming the greatest fool possible. There is a strange weakness which sometimes comes over noble spirits, and which makes them infatuated with an erroneous novelty, though they fancy they have discovered some great truth. Men of enquiring and receptive minds are often decoyed from the old paths,-the good old ways; and while they think they are pursuing truth, they are being led into damnable error. He only is kept, as to his thoughts and doctrinal views, whom God keeps, for there are errors that would, if it were possible, deceive even the very elect; and there are men and women going about in this world, with smooth tongues and plausible arguments, who carry honeyed words upon their lips, though drawn swords are concealed behind their backs. Blessed are they who are preserved from these wolves in sheep’s clothing. Lord, thou alone canst preserve us from the pernicious errors of the times, for thou art “the only wise God our Saviour.”

And, dear friends, we need keeping from an evil spirit. I do not know which I should prefer,-to see one of my dear Christian brethren fall into doctrinal error, or into an un-Christian spirit. I would prefer neither, for I think this is a safe rule,-of two evils, choose neither. It is sad to hear some people talk as if they alone are right, and all other Christians are wrong. If there is anything which is the very essence and soul of Christianity, it is brotherly love; but brotherly love seems to be altogether forgotten by these people; and other Christians, who, in the judgment of sobriety, are as earnest, and as true-hearted, and as useful as themselves, are set down as belonging to a kind of Babylonian system;-I hardly know what they do not call it, but they give it all sorts of bad names, and this is thought to be a high style of Christianity. God grant that the man may be forgiven who thought it to be a worthy purpose of his life to found a sect whose distinguishing characteristic should be that it would have no communion with any other Christians! The mischief that man has done is utterly incalculable, and I can only pray that, in the providence of God, some part of it may die with him.

O brethren and sisters, I charge you, whatever mistakes you make, not to make a mistake about this one thing,-that, even if you have all knowledge, and have not charity, it profiteth you nothing; even if you could get a perfect creed, and knew that your mode of worship was absolutely apostolic, yet, if you also imbibed the idea that you could not worship with any other Christians, and that they were altogether outside your camp, your error would be far worse than all other errors put together, for to be wrong in heart is even worse than to be wrong in head. I would have you true to God’s truth; but, above all, I would have you true to God’s love. My brother, I think you are mistaken about this matter or that; but do you love the Lord Jesus Christ? If so, I love you. I have no doubt that I also am mistaken about some things; but do not therefore withdraw your hand, and say that you cannot have fellowship with me. I have fellowship with my Father who is in heaven, and with his Son, Jesus Christ, and with his blessed Spirit; and methinks that it ill becomes you, if you call yourself a son of that same God, to refuse to have fellowship with me when I have fellowship with him. God save you from this evil spirit; but you may readily enough fall into it unless the Lord shall keep you. Your very zeal for truth may drive you into a forgetfulness of Christian love; and if it does, it will be a sad pity. O Lord, keep us from falling in this way!

But there are falls of another sort which may happen to the brightest Christian; I mean, falls into outward sin. As you read Jude’s Epistle through, you will see what apostates some professors became, and you will be led to cry, “Lord, keep me from falling!” And if you were the pastor of a large church like mine, you would see enough to convince you that traitors like Judas are not all dead,-that, amidst the faithful, the unfaithful are still found,-that there are bad fish to be thrown away, as well as good fish to be kept; and every time we execute an act of discipline,-every time we have to bemoan the fall of one who looked like a brother,-we may thank God that we have been kept, and may sing this doxology, “Unto him that is able to keep us from falling, be glory and power for ever.”

And, dear friends, there is a way of falling, out of which people are not so often recovered as when they fall into overt sin; I mean, falling into negligence as to natural or Christian duties. I have known professors who have been very lax at home,-children who were not obedient to their parents,-husbands who did not love their wives as they ought,-wives who were quite at home at this meeting and that, but very negligent of their domestic duties. And, mark you, where that is the case, it is a thing to mourn over, for the Christian ought to be absolutely reliable in everything he has to do. I would not give twopence for your religion if you are a tradesman, but not fair in your dealings. I do not care if you can sing like David, or preach like Paul, if you cannot measure a yard of material with the proper number of inches, or if your scales do not weigh rightly, or your general mode of business is not straight and true, you had better make no profession of religion. The separation of what is called “religious” from the “secuer” is one of the greatest possible mistakes. There is no such thing as a religion of Sundays, and of chapels and churches; at least, though there is such a thing, it is not worth having. The religion of Christ is a religion for seven days in the week,-a religion for every place and for every act; and it teaches men, whether they eat, or drink, or whatever they do, to do all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and to the glory of God. I pray that you may be kept from falling away from that religion, and that you may be kept up to the mark in serving the Lord in all things, and attending diligently to the little commonplace matters of daily life.

And you know, dear friends, there is another sort, of falling; that is, when the heart gets gradually cold,-when the Christian wanders away little by little,-when the life becomes more or less inconsistent with the profession. Oh, how many professors get into this state! They are like people who are not as well as they used to be. They do not know when they began to feel worse; it was months ago, and every day they have got weaker, till now you can see their bones, though once they were full of flesh. Now they discover that, whereas once they could have walked ten miles without fatigue, half a mile or less wearies them. Their appetite, too, has gradually gone; they scarcely know how. Ah, these are the sick folk with whom the physician has more trouble than he has with those who are suddenly seized by some well-known disease; and that gradual decline of spiritual health, which does not come all at once, but little by little, is one of the most perilous of evils; and we have need continually to cry, “Lord, keep us from this;” and to praise his name that he is able so to keep us.

Thus I have shown you that we need keeping; and, brethren, none but the Lord can keep us. No man can keep himself; without God’s grace, he will surely fail. And no place can keep us. Some people think that, if they could get into such-and-such a family, they could keep from sin, but they are mistaken. In every position which a man occupies, he will find temptation. We have heard of the hermit, who hoped to get rid of all sin by living in a cave. He took with him his little brown loaf and his jug of water but he had hardly entered the cave before he upset his jug, and spilt the water. It was a long way to the well, and he got so angry with himself for what he had done, that he soon discovered that the devil could get into a cave as quickly as he could, so he thought he might as well go back, and face the trials of ordinary society. There is a story which they tell in Scotland of a family who were thriftless, and therefore did not succeed; but they thought it was one of the “brownies” that kept them, from getting on; so they decided to “flit.” They put all their things into the cart; but just as they were about to start, they heard a noise that made them cry out, “The brownie is in the churn;” so, wherever the churn went, the brownie would go too. And you may remove wherever you like, and think, “If I get into such a position, I shall escape from temptation;” but you will find that. “the brownie is in the churn” still, and he will follow you wherever you may go. You cannot be kept from falling by choosing another situation. You had better stop where you are, brother, and fight the devil there, for perhaps the next place that you select as the scene of combat may not be as suitable as the one you have now.

“Ah!” says one, “I wish I could get to-

“ ‘A lodge in some vast wilderness,

Some boundless contiguity of shade;

Where rumour of oppression and deceit,

Of unsuccessful or successful war,

Might never reach me more.’ ”

Yes, yes; but that is not the way to conquer sin, is it? Suppose the battle of Waterloo is just beginning, and here is a soldier who wants to win a victory; so he runs away,-gets off to Brussels, and hides himself in a cellar! Is he likely to be numbered among the heroes of the day? No, brethren; and if there is any sin to be overcome in this world, there is no credit to the man who says, “I am going to hide somewhere out of the world.” No, no, my brother; accept the lot that God has provided for you; take your place in the ranks of his soldiers; and whatever temptation comes, look up to him who is able to keep you from falling, but do not dream of running away, for that is the way to fall, that is being defeated before the battle begins. Nobody but God can keep you. You may join whatever church you like; you may wear a hat with a broad brim, and say “thou” and “thee”; you may meet with those who break bread, and preach nothing but the gospel of the grace of God; you may dwell amongst the best people who ever lived; but you will still be tempted. Neither place nor people, neither manners nor customs can keep you from falling; God alone can do it.

But here is the mercy, God can do it. Notice how Jude’s doxology puts it: “To the only wise God our Saviour.” It is because he alone is wise that he alone is able to keep us from falling. He does it by teaching us the truth, by warning us against secret sin, and by his providential leading. Sometimes, he keeps temptation from us; at other times, he allows a temptation to come to us that, by overcoming it, we may be the stronger to meet another one. Oftentimes, he delivers us from temptation by letting affliction come upon us. Many a man has been kept from falling into sin by being stretched upon a bed of sickness. Had it not been for the loss of that eye, he would have looked upon vanity. Had it not been for that broken bone, he would have run in the ways of ungodliness. We little know how much preservation from falling we owe to our losses and crosses. The story of Sir James Thornhill painting the inside of the cupola of St. Paul’s is probably well known to you. When he had finished one of the compartments, he was stepping backward that he might get a full view of it, and so went almost to the edge of the scaffolding, and would have fallen over if he had taken another step; but a friend, who saw his danger, wisely seized one of his brushes, and rubbed some paint over his picture. The artist, in his rage, rushed forward to save his painting, and so saved his own life. We have all pictured life; what a fairy picture we made of it; and as we admired it, we walked further and yet further away from God and safety, and got nearer and yet nearer to perilous temptation, when trial came, and ruined the picture we had painted; and then, though scarcely knowing why, we came forward and were saved. God had kept us from, falling by the trouble he had sent to us.

God has often kept us from falling by a bitter sense of our past sin. We have not dared to go near the fire again, for our former burns have scarcely healed. I have also noticed, in my own case, that when the desire for sin has come with force, the opportunity for sin has not been present; and when the opportunity of evil has been present, then the desire has been absent. It is wonderful how God prevents these two things from meeting, and so keeps his people from falling.

Above all, it is by the Divine Spirit that God bears us up as upon eagle’s wings. The Spirit teaches us to hate sin, and to love righteousness, and so we are daily kept from falling.

Brethren, join with me in adoring the Lord that he will keep us to the end. Have we committed our souls into the hands of Jesus? Then, our souls are safe for ever. Are we trusting to him to keep us till the day of his appearing? If so, he will keep us; not one sheep or lamb out of his flock shall by any possibility be destroyed by the wolf, or the bear, or the roaring lion of hell. They shall all be his in the day when they pass again under the hands of him that telleth them.

Now, secondly, let us adore him because he will, at the last, present us “faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy.”

There will come a day, brethren, when we must either be presented in the courts of God as his courtiers, or else be driven from his judgment-seat as rebels against his authority. We look forward with the confident expectation that we shall be presented as the friends of Christ unto God even the Father; and that is, indeed, a cause for adoring gratitude

Do you notice how Jude puts it? “To present you faultless.” There shall be none in heaven but those who are faultless. There shall by no means enter into those holy courts anything that defileth. Heaven is perfectly pure; and if you and I are ever to get there, we must be pure as the driven snow. No taint of sin must be upon us, or else we cannot stand among the courtiers of God. His flaming throne would shoot forth columns of devouring fire upon any guilty soul that dared to stand in the courts of the Most High, if such a standing were possible. But we are impure,-impure as to our acts; and, worst of all, impure as to our very nature; how then can we hope ever to stand there? Yet, dear brethren and sisters, our confidence is that we shall. Why?

Is it not because Christ is able to present us faultless there! Come, Christian, think for a minute how faultless Christ has made you so far as your past sin is concerned. The moment you believed in him, you were so completely washed in his precious blood that not a spot of sin remained upon you. Try to realize that, whatever your past life has been, if you now believe in Jesus Christ, you are cleansed from all iniquity by virtue of his atoning sacrifice, and you are covered by a spotless robe of righteousness by virtue of his blessed life of perfect purity and obedience to his Father’s will. You are now without fault so far as your past sin is concerned, for he has cast it all into the depths of the sea; but you feel that you are not without fault as to your nature.

“Oh!” say you, “I feel everything that is evil rising at times within me.” But all that evil is under sentence of death. Christ nailed it to his cross. Crucifixion is a lingering and very painful death, and the culprit struggles ere he breathes his last; but your sins have had their death-blow. When Christ was nailed to the cross, your sins were nailed there too, and they shall never come down again. Die they must, even as he died. It will be a blessed hour when sin shall at last give up the ghost,-when there shall be not even the tendency to sin within our nature. Then shall we be presented faultless before the throne of God.

“Can that ever be?” asks one. Well may you ask that question, brother. Can it ever be that we shall not be tempted by one foul lust, nor be disturbed by one unbridled passion, nor feel the emotions of envy or of pride again? Yes, it shall surely be. Christ has secured this blessing to you. His name is Jesus, Saviour, “for he shall save his people from their sins.” He must and will do this for all who trust him. Rejoice that he will do this, for no one but God can do it. It must be “the only wise God our Saviour” who can accomplish this; but accomplish it he will. Does your faith enable you to picture yourself as standing before the throne of God faultless? Well then, give to the Lord the glory which is due unto him, for such a wondrous act of grace as that.

This is how you are to be presented by Christ in glory. There is a great stir in a family when a daughter is to be presented at court, and a great deal is thought of it; but, one day, you and I, who have believed in Jesus, shall be presented to the Father. What radiant beauty shall we then wear when God himself shall look upon us, and declare us to be without fault;-when there shall be no cause for sorrow remaining, and therefore we shall be presented with exceeding joy! It shall be so, my brother; it shall be so, my sister; therefore do not doubt it. How soon it shall be, we cannot tell; possibly, to-morrow. Perhaps, ere the sun rises again, you and I may be presented by Christ “before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy.” We cannot tell when it will be, but we shall be there in his good time. We shall be perfect; we shall be “accepted in the Beloved;” and, therefore, “unto him be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen.”

That is the note with which I have to close my discourse. Let us, because of these two great blessings of final preservation and presentation before his glory, offer unto the Lord our highest ascriptions of praise.

Jude says, “Both now and ever.” Well, we will attend to the “ever” as eternity rolls on; but let us attend to the praise of God “now”-at this moment: “To the only wise God our Saviour be glory and majesty, dominion and power now.” Come, brethren and sisters, think of what you owe to him who has kept you to this day, and will not let you go. Think of where you might have been; and think, I may say, of where you used to be, in your unregenerate state. Yet you are not there now; but here you are, without self righteousness, made to differ from your fellow-men, entirely through the grace of God. You have been kept, perhaps twenty years; thirty years, forty years,-possibly, fifty years. Well, unto him be the glory; give him the glory even now.

How can you do it? Well, feel it in your hearts; speak of it to your neighbours; talk of it to your children. Tell everybody you meet what a good and blessed and faithful God he is, and so give him glory now. And be happy and cheerful; you cannot glorify God better than by a calm, quiet, happy life. Left the world know that you serve a good Master. If you are in trouble, do not let anyone see that the trouble touches your spirit;-nay, more, do not let it trouble your spirit. Rest in God; take evil as well as good from his hand, and keep on praising him. You do not know how much good you may do, and how greatly you may glorify God, if you praise him in your dark times. Worldlings do not care much about our psalm-singing unless they see us in pain and sorrow, and observe that we praise God then. I like, and the world likes, a religion that will wash,-a religion that will stand many showers, and much rough usage. Some Christians’ joy disappears in the wear and tear of life; it cannot endure the world’s rough handling. Let it not be so with us, beloved; but let us praise, and bless, and magnify the name of the Lord as long as we have any being.

I know that, in speaking thus, I am only addressing a part of my congregation. I wish that every man and woman here were now praising the Lord, and I am sure that you could not have a better occupation to all eternity. Remember that, if you do not praise God, it is impossible for you ever to enter heaven, for that is the chief occupation of heaven; and remember also that praise from your lips, until those lips are divinely cleansed, would be like a jewel in a swine’s snout, a thing altogether out of place. For you, dear unsaved hearer, the first thing is not praise, but prayer,-nay, not even, prayer first, but faith. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved;” and then, in faith, pray the prayer which God accepts. But thou must first believe in Jesus. “And what does believing in Jesus mean?” thou askest. It means this: thy sin deserves punishment, for God, who is just, must punish sin. But his Son came into the world to suffer in the stead of those who trust him; and now, God can be just, and yet the Justifier of every soul that believes in Jesus. In the person of his Son, God hangs upon a tree, and dies a felon’s death; wilt thou believe in the merit of that death, and in the love of God, who spared not his own Son in order that he might spare us? Canst thou trust Jesus as thy God and Saviour? Wilt thou do it now? Then thou art saved. The first moment of thus trusting God is the beginning of a new life,-a life which will drive out the old death of sin. The moment that thou dost thus trust thy God, thou wilt be placed upon a new footing with regard to him, thy whole aspect towards God will be changed. Repentance will take such possession of thy spirit that thou wilt be actuated by new motives, and swayed by new desires; in fact, thou wilt be a new man in Christ Jesus. This is being saved,-saved from the love of sin, saved from returning to sin, saved from falling, and so completely saved that Christ shall one day present thee “faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy.” May God do this for every one of you, my hearers, according to the riches of his grace! It is my heart’s last, best, and strongest desire that every one of you may be saved. May we all meet in heaven, before the throne of God, never more to be parted! While I am away, listen with all earnestness to other heralds of the cross, and pray the Lord to bless their messages to your salvation, if mine have not been so blest. I pray that, by some instrumentality, you may all be saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation. Amen.

Exposition by C. H. Spurgeon.