A Sermon Delivered On Sunday Morning, October 26, 1862, By Pastor C. H. Spurgeon, At The Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
He has said, “I will never leave you, nor forsake you.” (Heb 13:5)
1. What power resides in “Thus says the Lord!” The man who can grasp by faith, “He has said,” has an all conquering weapon in his hand. What doubt will not be killed by this to twoedged sword? What fear shall not fall stricken with a deadly wound before this arrow from the bow of God’s covenant? Will not the distresses of life and the pangs of death, will not the corruptions within and the temptations without, will not the trials from above and the temptations from beneath all seem only light afflictions when we can hide ourselves behind the bulwark of “He has said?” Whether for delight in our tranquillity, or for strength in our conflict, “He has said” must be our daily resort.
2. Hence, let us learn, my brethren, the extreme value of searching the Scriptures. There may be a promise in the Word which would exactly fit your case, but you may not know of it, and therefore miss its comfort. You are like prisoners in a dungeon, and there may be one key in the bunch which would unlock the door, and you might be free; but if you will not look for it you may still remain a prisoner, although liberty is near at hand. There may be a potent medicine in the great pharmacopoeia of Scripture, and you may still remain sick, although there is the precise remedy that would cure your disease, unless you will examine and search the Scriptures to discover what “He has said.” Should we not, besides reading Scripture, store our memories richly with the promises of God? We can remember the sayings of great men; we treasure up the verses of renowned poets; ought we not to be profound in our knowledge of the words of God? The Scriptures should be the classics of a Christian, and just as our orators quote Homer, or Virgil, or Horace, when they wish to clinch a point, so we should be able to quote the promises of God when we wish to solve a difficulty or overthrow a doubt. “He has said,” is the foundation of all riches and the fountain of all comfort, let it dwell in you richly as “a well of water, springing up to everlasting life.” And, oh, my brethren, how diligently should we test the Scriptures! Besides searching them by reading, and treasuring them by memory, we should test them by experience, and as often as a promise is proven to be true we should make a mark beside it, and note that we also can say, as one did of old, “This is my comfort in my affliction: for your word has quickened me.” “Wait on the Lord,” said Isaiah, and then he added “Wait, I say, on the Lord,” as if his own experience led him to echo the voice of God to his hearers. Test the promise, take God’s cheque to the counter, and see if it is cashed. Grasp the lever, which he ordains to lift your trials, and try it to see if it possesses real power. Cast this divine tree into the bitter waters of your Marah, and learn how it will sweeten them. Take this salt, and throw it into the turbid waters, and witness if they are not made sweet, as were the waters of old by the prophet Elisha. Taste and see that the Lord is good, for there is no lack for those who fear him.
3. The Apostles, you will notice, like their Master, were always very ready with quotations. Although they were inspired men, and could have used fresh words, yet they preferred, as an example to us, to quote “He has said”; let us do the same, for, although the words of ministers may be sweet, the words of God are sweeter; and although original thoughts may have the novelty of freshness, yet the ancient words of God have the ring, and the weight, and the value of old and precious coins, and they shall not be found lacking in the day when we shall use them.
4. It seems from our text that “He has said” is not only useful to chase away doubts, fears, difficulties, and demons, but that it also yields nourishment for all our graces. You perceive that when the apostle wished to make us contented, he says, “Be content with such things as you have, for he has said”; and when he wishes to make us bold and courageous, he puts it, “he has said, therefore, we may boldly say, ‘God is my helper, I will not fear what man can do to me.’?” When the apostle wishes to nourish faith, he does it by quoting from Scripture the examples of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob, of Moses, of Gideon, of Barak, and of Jephthah. When he wishes to nourish our patience, he says, “You remember the patience of Job”; or if it is our prayerfulness, he says, “Elijah was a man of like passions with us, and he prayed and prevailed.” “He has said” is food for every grace as well as death for every sin. Here you have nourishment for what is good, and poison for what is evil. Search, then, the Scriptures, for so shall you grow healthy, strong, and vigorous in the divine life.
5. We turn at once, with great pleasure, to the wonderful words of our text, “He has said, ‘I will never leave you, nor forsake you.’?” I have no doubt you are aware that our translation does not convey the whole force of the original, and that it would hardly be possible in English to give the full weight of the Greek. We might render it, “He has said, ‘I will never, never leave you; I will never, never, never forsake you’?”; for, though that would be not a literal, but rather a free rendering, yet, since there are five negatives in the Greek, we do not know how to give their force in any other way. Two negatives nullify each other in our language; but here, in the Greek, they intensify the meaning following one after another, as I suppose David’s five stones out of the brook would have done if the first had not been enough to make the giant reel. The verse we sang just now is a very good rendering of the original —
The soul that on Jesus hath lean’d for repose,
I will not, I will not desert to his foes;
That soul, though all hell should endeavour to shake,
I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.
Here you have the five negatives very well placed, and the force of the Greek, as nearly as possible, given.
6. In trying to expound this fivefold assurance, this quintessence of consolation, we shall have to draw your attention, first of all, to an awful condition, or what is negated; secondly, to a gracious promise, or what is positively guaranteed; next, we shall observe notable occasions or times when this promise was uttered; a few words upon certain sweet confirmations which prove the text to be true; and then, in the fifth place, necessary conclusions which flow from the words of the promise.
7. I. First of all, then, AN AWFUL CONDITION — LOST AND FORSAKEN by God! I am quite certain I shall fail in attempting to describe this state of mind. I have thought of it, dreamed of it, and felt it in such feeble measure as a child of God can feel it, but I do not know how to describe it.
8. 1. Forsaking implies an utter loneliness. Put a traveller in a vast howling wilderness, where for many a league there is no trace of man — no footstep of traveller. The solitary wretch cries for help — the hollow echo of the rocks is his only reply. No bird in the air; not even a prowling jackal in the waste; not an insect in the sunbeam to keep him company; not even a solitary blade of grass to remind him of God! Yet, even there he is not alone: for those bare rocks prove there is a God, and the hot sand beneath his feet, and the blazing sun above his head, all witness to a present Deity. But what would be the loneliness of a man forsaken by God! No migration could be so awful as this, for he says, “If I take the wings of the morning and fly to the uttermost parts of the sea you are there.” Such a state would be worse than hell, for David says, “If I make my bed in hell you are there.” Loneliness is a feeling which none of us delights in. Solitude may have some charms, but those who are forced to be her captives have not discovered them. A transient solitude may give pleasure; to be alone, utterly alone, is terrible; to be alone, without God, is such an emphasis of loneliness, that I defy the lip even of a damned spirit to express the horror and anguish that must be concentrated in it. There is far more than you and I dream of in the language of our Lord Jesus, when he says, “I have trodden the winepress alone” Alone! You remember he once said, “You shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.” There is no agony in that sentence, but what must be his grief when he says — “I have trodden the winepress alone!” “My God, why have you forsaken me?” is the cry of human nature in its uttermost dismay. Thank God, you and I by this promise are taught that we never shall know the desperate loneliness of being forsaken by God; yet, this is what it would be if he should forsake us!
9. 2. Mingling with this mournful solitude is a sense of utter helplessness. Power belongs to God; withdraw the Lord, and the strong men must utterly fail. The archangel without God passes away and is not; the everlasting hills bow, and the solid pillars of the earth are dissolved. Without God our dust returns to the earth; without God our spirit mourns like David, “I am forgotten as a dead man out of mind; I am like a broken vessel.” Christ knew what this was when he said, “I am a worm, and no man.” He was so utterly broken, so emptied of all power, that as he hung with dislocated limbs upon the cross, he cried, “My strength is dried up like a potsherd; you have brought me into the dust of death.” No broken reed or smoking flax can be so feeble as a soul forsaken by God. Our state would be as deplorably destitute as that of Ezekiel’s infant, deserted and cast into the open field with no one to swaddle and no one to care for him, left utterly to perish and to die, — such should we be if we could be forsaken by God! Glorious are those negatives which shut us in from all fear of this calamity.
10. 3. To be forsaken by God implies utter friendlessness. A thousand times let Jehovah be blessed that very few of us have ever known what it is to be friendless! There have been times in the experience of some of us when we felt that we stood without a friend in the particular place which we then occupied, for we had a grief which we could not entrust to any other heart. Every man who is eminently useful in the Church will know times when as the champion of Israel he must go out alone. This, however, is compensated by stronger faith, and the moral grandeur of solitary heroism. But what must it be to be some poor wretch whose parents have long since been buried; who has lost his most distant relatives; who, passing along the street remembers the name of one who was once his father’s friend, knocks at the door, and is repulsed; remembers another — and this is his last hope — one he played with in his infancy — stands at that door asking for charity and is bidden to go his way, and paces the cold November streets while the rain is pouring down, feeling to his utter dismay that no friend breathes for him? Should he return to his own parish it would be like going to his own dungeon, and if he enters the workhouse no eye there will flash sympathy upon him! He is utterly friendless and alone! I believe that many a suicide has resulted from the lack of a friend. As long as a man feels he has someone loving him, he has something worth living for; but when the last friend is gone and we feel that we are floating on a raft far out at sea, with not a sail in sight, and we cry, “Welcome death!” Our Lord and Master was brought to this state, and knew what it was to be forsaken, for he had no friends left. “He who eats bread with me has lifted up his heel against me.” “All the disciples forsook him and fled.” Brethren, many saints have lost all their friends, but have bravely borne the trial, for turning their eye to heaven, they have felt that although they were without friends they were still befriended. They have heard the voice of Jesus say, “I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you”; and, made strong by divine friendship, they have felt that they were not utterly bereaved. But to be forsaken by God! oh, may you and I never know it! To be without a friend in heaven; to look to that throne of glory and to see the blackness of darkness there; to turn to mercy and receive a frown; to flee to love and receive a rebuke; to turn to God and find that his ear is heavy so that he will not hear, and his hand restrained so that he will not help — oh! this is terror, terror heaped on terror, to be thus forsaken!
11. 4. Loneliness, helplessness, friendlessness — add these together, and then add the next — hopelessness. A man forsaken by men may still entertain some hope. But let him be forsaken by God, and then hope has failed; the last window is shut; not a ray of light now streams into the thick Egyptian darkness of his mind. Life is death; death is damnation — damnation in its lowest depths. Let him look to men, and they are broken reeds; let him turn to angels, and they are avengers; let him look to death, and even the tomb affords no refuge. Wherever he looks, blank, black despair seizes hold upon him. Our blessed Lord knew this when lover and friend had been put far from him, and his acquaintance into darkness. It was only his transcendent faith which enabled him after all to say “You will not leave my soul in hell: neither will you suffer your Holy One to see corruption.” The black shadow of this utter hopelessness went over him when he said, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death,” and he “sweat as it were great drops of blood, falling down to the ground.”
12. 5. To make up this fivefold forsaking, against which we have the five negatives, let us add to all this loneliness, helplessness, friendlessness, and hopelessness, a sense of unutterable agony. We speak of agony, but to feel it is a very different thing. Misery and despair — the wrestling of these with the spirit until the spirit is trodden down, and crushed, and broken, and chooses strangling rather than life; a horrible sense of every evil having made one’s heart its den; a consciousness that we are the target for all God’s arrows; that all God’s waves and billows have gone over us; that he has forgotten to be gracious; that he will be merciful to us no more; that he has in anger shut up his heart of compassion — this is a part of being forsaken by God which only lost spirits in hell can know! Our unbelief sometimes lets us get a glimpse of what this would be, but it is only a glimpse, only a glimpse; let us thank God that we are delivered from all fear of this tremendous evil. By five wounds does our Redeemer slay our unbelief.
13. Brethren, if God should leave us, notice the result: I picture to myself the very best state of one forsaken by God — it is uncertainty and chance. I would rather be an atom, which has God with it, predestinating its track and forcing it onward according to his own will, than I would be an archangel left to my own choice, to do as I wished and to act at I please, without the control of God; for an archangel, left without God, would soon lose his way, and fall to hell; or he would melt away, and drop and die; but the tiny atom, having God with it, would fulfil its predestinated course; it would be always in a sure track, and throughout eternity would have as much potence in it as at its first creation. I cannot think why some people are so fond of free will. I believe free will is the delight of sinners, but that God’s will is the glory of saints. There is nothing I desire more to get rid of than my own will, and to be absorbed into the will and purpose of my Lord. To do according to the will of him who is most good, most true, most wise, most mighty, seems to me to be heaven. Let others choose the dignity of independence, I crave the glory of being wholly dead in Christ, and only alive in him. Oh! dear friends, if the Lord should forsake us, to say the best of it, our course would be uncertain, and, before long it would end in nothingness. We know, further, that if God should forsake the best saint alive, that man would immediately fall into sin. He now stands securely on that lofty pinnacle, but his brain would reel and he would fall, if secret hands did not uphold him. He now picks his steps carefully; take away grace from him and he would roll in the mire, and wallow in it like other men. Let the godly be forsaken by his God, and he would go from bad to worse, until his conscience, now so tender, would be seared as with a hot iron. Next he would ripen into an atheist or a blasphemer, and he would come to his deathbed foaming at the mouth with rage; would come before the bar of his Maker with a curse upon his lip; and in eternity, left and forsaken by God, he would sink to hell with the condemned, indeed, and among the damned he would have the worst place, lower than the lowest, finding in the lowest depths a lower depth, finding in the wrath of God something more dreadful than the ordinary wrath which falls upon common sinners!
14. When we thus describe being forsaken by God, is it not satisfactory to the highest degree to remember that we have God’s word for it five times over, “I will never, never leave you; I will never, never, never forsake you?” I know those who caricature Calvinism say we teach that let a man live as he likes, yet if God is with him, he will be safe at the last. We teach no such thing, and our adversaries know better. They know that our doctrines are invulnerable if they will state them correctly, and that the only way in which they can attack us is to slander us and to misrepresent what we teach. Indeed, truly, we do not say so, but we say that where God begins the good work, the man will never live as he likes, or if he does, he will like to live as God would have him live; that where God begins a good work he carries it on; that man is never forsaken by God, nor does he forsake God, but is kept even to the end.
15. II. We have before us now, in the second place, A GRACIOUS PROMISE, or what is positively guaranteed.
16. What is guaranteed in this promise? Beloved, herein does God give to his people everything. “I will never leave you.” Then no attribute of God can cease to be engaged for us. Is he mighty? He will show himself strong on the behalf of those who trust him. Is HE love? Then with everlasting lovingkindness he will have mercy upon us. Whatever attributes may compose the character of Deity every one of them to its fullest extent shall be engaged on our side. Moreover, whatever God has, whether it is in the lowest hell or in the highest heaven, whatever can be contained in infinity or can be held within the circumference of eternity, whatever, to sum up, can be in him who fills all things, and yet is greater than all things, shall be with his people for ever, since “He has said, ‘I will never leave you, nor forsake you.’?” How one might enlarge here, but I forbear; you yourselves know that to sum up “all things” is a task beyond all human might.
17. III. More fully, however, to expound this promise, I would remind you of the five OCCASIONS in which it occurs in Scripture. The number five runs all through our subject. The sense and spirit of the text are to be found in innumerable places, and possibly there may be some other passages which approximate so very nearly to our text, that you might say they also are repetitions, but I think there are five which may clearly take the priority.
18. 1. One of the first instances is to be found in Genesis. “Behold, I am with you, and will keep you in all places where you go, and will bring you again into this land; for I will not leave you, until I have done what I have spoken to you.” (Ge 28:15) Here we have this promise in the case of a man of trials. More than either Abraham or Isaac, Jacob was the son of tribulation. He was now fleeing away from his father’s house, leaving the overly fondness of a mother’s attachment, abhorred by his older brother, who sought his blood. He lies down to sleep, with a stone for his pillow, with the hedges for his curtains, with the earth for his bed, and the heavens for his canopy; and as he sleeps thus friendless, solitary, and alone, God says to him, “I will never, never leave you.” Notice his later career. He is guided to Padanaram; God, his guide, does not leave him. At Padanaram Laban cheats him, wickedly and wrongfully cheats him in many ways; but God does not leave him, and he is more than a match for the thievish Laban. He flees at last with his wives and children; Laban, in hot haste pursues him, but the Lord does not leave him; Mizpah’s Mount bears witness that God can stop the pursuer, and change the foe into a friend. Esau comes against him; let Jabbok testify to Jacob’s wrestlings, and through the power of him who never did forsake his servant, Esau kisses his brother, whom once he thought to kill. Immediately Jacob dwells in tents and booths at Succoth; he journeys up and down throughout the land, and his sons treacherously kill the Shechemites. Then the nations all around seek to avenge their death, but the Lord again interposes, and Jacob is delivered. Poor Jacob is bereaved of his sons. He cries — “Joseph is not, and Simeon is not, and now you will take Benjamin away; all these things are against me.” But they are not against him; God has not left him, for he has not yet done everything that he had spoken to him about. The old man goes into Egypt; his lips are refreshed while he kisses the cheeks of his favourite Joseph, and until the last, when he gathers up his feet in the bed and sings of that coming Shiloh and the sceptre that should not depart from Judah, good old Jacob proves that in six troubles God is with his people, and in seven he does not forsake them; that even to hoar hairs he is the same, and until old age he carries them. You Jacobs, full of affliction, you tried and troubled heirs of heaven, he has said to you, each one of you — oh! believe him! — “I will never leave you; I will never forsake you.”
19. 2. The next instance in which we find this same promise is in Deuteronomy. Here we find it spoken, not so much to individuals as to the whole body collectively. Moses said to the people of Judah, by the Word of God, “Be strong, and of a good courage, do not fear, nor be afraid of them: for the Lord your God, it is he who goes with you; he will not fail you, nor forsake you.” (Deut 31:6) Beloved, we may take this promise as being spoken to God’s Church, as a Church. These people were to fight the accursed nations of Canaan, to drive out the giants, and the men who had chariots of iron, but the Lord said he would never leave them, nor did he, until from Dan to Beersheba the favoured race possessed the promised land, and the tribes went up to Jerusalem with the voice of joyful song. Now, as the Church of God, let us remember that the land lies before us, and we are called by God to go up and possess it. I wish it were my lot even more and more, like Joshua, to lead you from one place to another, striking the enemies of the Lord and extending the kingdom of Messiah! Let us undertake what we may, we shall never fail. Let us, by faith, dare great things, and we shall do great things. Let us venture upon notable exploits which shall seem fanatical to reason and absurd to men of prudence, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” If the Church of God would only know that her Lord cannot leave her, she might attempt greater things than she has ever done, and the success of her attempts would be most certain and sure. God never can forsake a praying people, nor cast off a labouring Church; he must bless us even to the end.
20. 3. The third
occasion upon which this promise was made is in Joshua,
where the Lord says to Joshua, “There
shall not any man be able to stand before you all the
days of your life: as I was with Moses, so I will be
with you: I will not fail you, nor forsake you.”
(Jos
1:5) Now this is
21. 4. On the next occasion, this same promise was given by David in his last moments to his son Solomon. David was speaking of what he himself by experience had proven to be true, and he declares — “Be strong and of good courage, and do it: do not fear, nor be dismayed: for the Lord God, even my God, will be with you; he will not fail you, nor forsake you, until you have finished all the work for the service of the house of the Lord.” (1Ch 28:20) Some Christians are placed where they need much prudence, discretion, and wisdom. You may take this for your promise. The Queen of Sheba came to see Solomon; she asked him many difficult questions, but God did not leave him, nor forsake him, and he was able to answer them all. As judge over Israel, many knotty points were brought before him; you remember the child and the prostitutes, and how wisely he decided the case. The building of the temple was a very mighty work — the like of which the earth had never seen, but, by wisdom given to him, the stones were fashioned, and laid one upon another, until at last the top stone was brought out with shoutings. You shall do the same, oh man of business, though yours is a very responsible situation. You shall finish your course, oh careful worker, though there are many eyes that watch for your halting. You shall do the same, sister, although you need to have seven eyes rather than two, you shall hear the voice of God saying, “This is the way, walk in it.” You shall never be ashamed nor confounded, world without end.
22. 5. Once more, and perhaps this fifth occasion may be the most comforting to the most of you, “When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue fails for thirst, I the Lord will hear them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them.” (Isa 41:17) You may be brought to this state today. Your soul may need Christ, but you may not be able to find him. You may feel that without the mercy which comes from the atoning blood you are lost. You may have gone to works and ceremonies, to prayings and doings, to alms givings and to experiences, and have found them all dry wells, and now you can hardly pray, for your tongue cleaves to the roof of your mouth for thirst. Now in your worst condition, brought to the lowest state into which a creature ever can be cast, Christ will not forsake you, he will appear for your help.
23. Surely, one of these five occasions must suit you, and let me here remind you that whatever God has said to any one saint he has said to all. When he opens a well for one man it is so that all may drink. When the manna falls, it is not only for those in the wilderness, but we by faith still eat the manna. No promise is of private interpretation. When God opens a granary door to give out food, there may be some one starving man who is the occasion for its being opened, but all the hungry besides may come and feed too. Whether he gave the word to Abraham or to Moses does not matter; he has given it to you as one of the covenanted seed. There is not a high blessing too lofty for you; nor a wide mercy too extensive for you. Now lift up your eyes to the north and to the south, to the east and to the west, for all this is yours. Climb to Pisgah’s top, and view the utmost limit of the divine promise, for the land is all your own. There is not a brook of living water from which you may not drink. If the land flows with milk and honey, eat the honey and drink the milk. The fattest of the cattle, yes, and the sweetest of the wines, let all be yours, for there is no denial of any one of them to any saint. Be bold to believe, for he has said, “I will never leave you, nor forsake you.” To put everything in one, there is nothing you can want, there is nothing you can ask for, there is nothing you can need in time or in eternity, there is nothing living, nothing dying, there is nothing in this world, nothing in the next world, there is nothing now, nothing at the resurrection morning, nothing in heaven that is not contained in this text — “I will never leave you; I will never forsake you.”
24. IV. I shall give five blows to drive home the nail while I speak upon THE SWEET CONFIRMATIONS of this most precious promise.
25. 1. Let me remind you that the Lord will not and cannot leave his people, because of his relationship to them. He is your Father; will your Father leave you? Has he not said — “Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yes, they may forget, yet I will not forget you.” Would you, being evil, leave your child to perish? Never, never! Remember, Christ is your husband. Would you, a husband, neglect your wife? Is it not a shame to a man, unless he nourishes and cherishes her even as his own body, and will Christ become one of these bad husbands? Has he not said — “I hate divorce,” and will he ever divorce you? Remember, you are part of his body. No man ever yet hated his own flesh. You may be only as a little finger, but will he leave his finger to rot, to perish, to starve? You may be the least honourable of all the members, but is it not written that upon these he bestows abundant honour, and so our uncomely parts have abundant comeliness? If he is father, if he is husband, if he is head, if he is all in all, how can he leave you? Do not think so harshly of your God.
26. 2. Then, next, his honour binds him never to forsake you. When we see a house half built and left in ruins, we say, “This man began to build and was not able to finish.” Shall this be said of your God, that he began to save you and could not bring you to perfection? Is it possible that he will break his word, and so stain his truth? Shall men be able to cast a slur upon his power, his wisdom, his love, his faithfulness? No! thank God, no! “I give,” he says “to my sheep eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.” If you should perish, believer, hell would ring with diabolical laughter against the character of God; and if anyone whom Jesus undertook to save should perish, then the demons of the pit would point the finger of scorn for ever against a defeated Christ, against a God that undertook but could not complete.
His honour is engaged to save
The lowliest of his sheep;
All that his heavenly Father gave
His hands securely keep.
27. 3. And if that is not enough, you will remember besides this that the past all goes to prove that he will not forsake you. You have been in deep waters; have you been drowned? You have walked through the fires; have you been burned? You have had six troubles; has he forsaken you? You have gone down to the roots of the mountains, and the weeds have been wrapped around your head; has he not brought you up again? You have borne great and severe troubles; but has he not delivered you? Say, when did he leave you? Testify against him; if you have found him forgetful, then doubt him. If you have found him unworthy of your confidence, then disown him, but not until then. The past is vocal with a thousand songs of gratitude, and every note in it proves by an indisputable logic that he will not forsake his people.
28. 4. And if that is not enough ask your father and the saints who have gone before. Did anyone ever perish trusting in Christ? I have heard that some whom Jehovah loved have fallen from grace, and have been lost. I have heard lips of ministers thus prostitute themselves to falsehood, but I know that there never was such a case. He keeps all his saints; not one of them has perished; they are in his hand, and have so far been preserved. David mourns, “All your waves and your billows have gone over me”; yet, he cries, “Hope in God, for I shall yet praise him.” Jonah laments, “The earth with her bars was around me for ever”; and yet, before long he says, “Salvation is from the Lord.” You glorified ones above, through much tribulation you have inherited the kingdom, and wearing your white robes, you smile from your thrones of glory and say to us, “Do not doubt the Lord, neither distrust him, he has not forsaken his people nor cast off his chosen.”
29. 5. Beloved friends, there is no reason why he should cast us off. Can you think of any reason why he should cast you away? Is it your poverty, your nakedness, your peril, the danger of your life? In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who has loved us. Do you say it is your sins? Then I answer sin can never be a cause why God should cast away his people, for they were full of sin when he at first embraced them, and espoused their cause. That would have been a cause why he never should have loved them, but having loved them when they were dead in trespasses and sins, their sin can never be a reason for leaving them. Besides, the Apostle says, “I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,” — and sin is one of the things present, and I fear it is one of the things to come — “nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Oh child of God, there is no fear of your misusing this precious truth. The base born professor of godliness may say, “I will sin, for God will not cast me away,” but you will not, you heirs of heaven; rather you will bind this around your heart, and say “Now I will love him who having loved his own, loves them even to the end.” Glory be to God,
’Midst all my sin, and care, and woe,
His Spirit will not let me go.
30. Go, you slaves who fear the curse of God, and sweat and toil; we are his sons, and we know he cannot expel us from his heart. May God deliver us from the infamous bondage of the doctrine which makes men fear that God may be unfaithful, that Christ may divorce his own spouse, may let the members of his own body perish; that he may die for them and yet not save them. If there is any truth taught to us in Scripture, it is that the children of God cannot perish. If this Book teaches anything whatever, if it is not all a fiction from beginning to end, it teaches in a hundred places that “The righteous shall hold on his way, and he who has clean hands shall wax stronger and stronger.” “The mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but the covenant of his love cannot depart from us says the Lord who has mercy upon us.”
31. V. And now, fifthly, the SUITABLE CONCLUSIONS to be drawn from this doctrine.
32. 1. One of the first is contentment. The apostle says, “Having food and clothing, let us be content with it, for he has said, ‘I will never leave you, nor forsake you.’?” Ishmael, the son of Hagar, had his water in a bottle; and he might have laughed at Isaac because Isaac had no bottle, but then here was the difference between them — Isaac lived by the well. Now some of us have little enough in this world; we have no bottle of water, no stock in hand; but then we live by the well, and that is better still. To depend upon the daily providence of a faithful God, is better than to be worth two hundred thousand pounds a year.
33. 2. Courage is the next lesson. Let us boldly say, “God is my helper, why should I fear what man can do to me?” A child of God afraid! Why, there is nothing more contrary to his nature. If anyone would persecute you, look them in the face and bear it cheerfully. If they laugh at you, let them laugh; you can laugh when they shall howl. If anyone despises you, be content to be despised by fools, and to be misunderstood by madmen. It would be hard if the world loved us; it is an easy thing if the world hates us. We are so used to be spoken of as altogether vile in our motives and selfish in our objects; so used to hear our adversaries misconstrue our best words and pull our sentences to pieces, so that if they were to do anything else except howl, we should think ourselves unworthy. “Who are you, that you should be afraid of a man who shall die, and of the son of man who shall be made as grass; and forget the Lord your Maker, who has stretched out the heavens, and laid the foundations of the earth.”
34. 3. Then next, we ought to cast off our despondency. Some of you came here this morning as black as the weather. Just now we saw some gleams of sunshine peering through those side windows, until our friends hastened to draw the blinds, to shut out the dazzling brightness from their eyes; I hope, however, you will not shut out the rays of holy joy which break in upon you now. No, since he has said, “I will never leave nor forsake you” leave your troubles in your pews, and take away a song.
35. 4. And then, my brethren, here is argument for the greatest possible delight. How we ought to rejoice with joy unspeakable if he will never leave us! Mere songs are not enough; shout for joy all you who are upright in heart.
36. 5. And, lastly, what ground there is here for faith! Let us lean upon our God with all our weight. Let us throw ourselves upon his faithfulness as we do upon our beds, bringing all our weariness to his dear rest. Now, let us cast on our God the burdens of our bodies, and our souls, for he has said, “I will never leave you; I will never forsake you.”
37. Oh, I wish this promise belonged to you all! I would give my right arm if it could! But some of you must not touch it; it does not belong to some of you, for it is the exclusive property of the man who trusts in Christ. “Oh!” one says, “then I will trust in Christ.” Do it, soul, do it; and if you trust in him he will never leave you. Black as you are, he will wash you; he will never leave you. Wicked as you are, he will make you holy, he will never leave you. Although you have nothing that should win his love, he will press you to his heart; he will never leave you. Living or dying, in time or in eternity, he will never forsake you, but will surely bring you to his right hand, and say, “Here I am, and the children whom you have given to me.”
38. May God seal these five negatives upon our memories and hearts for Christ’s sake. Amen.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2010/05/13/never-never-never-never-never