Our Stronghold 2
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Then, beloved, there are the temptations of the devil, and these are very dreadful; but how sweet it is still to feel that the character of God is our strong tower. Without walls of grace and bulwarks of mercy, how can a tempted soul escape the clutches of the archdestroyer? But where the soul lies in the entrenchments of divine promise all the devils in hell cannot carry it by storm. I saw this week, one whom many of you greatly respect- the former pastor of this Church, Mr. James Smith, of Cheltenham, since departed "to be with Christ, which is far better." — a name well-known by his innumerable little works which are scattered everywhere, and cannot fail to do good. You will remember that about a year ago, he was struck with paralysis, and one half of his body is dead. But yet, when I saw him on the bed, I had not seen a more cheerful man in the full heyday of strength. I had been told that he was the subject of very fearful conflicts at times; so after I had shaken hands with him, I said, "Friend Smith, I hear you have many doubts and fears!" "Who told you that?" said he, "for I have none." "Never have any? why I understood you had many conflicts."
"Yes," he said, "I have many conflicts, but I have no doubts; I have many wars within, but I have no fears. Who could have told you that? I hope I have not led any one to think that. It is a hard battle, but I know the victory is sure. After I have had an ill night’s rest — of course, through physical debility — my mind is troubled, and then that old coward, Satan, who would be afraid to meddle with me perhaps if I were strong, attacks me when I am weak; but I am not afraid of him; don’t you go away with that opinion; he does throw many fiery darts at me, but I have no doubt as to my final victory." Then, he said, in his own way, "I am just like a package that is all ready to go by train, packed, corded, labeled, paid for, and on the platform, waiting for the express to come by and take me to glory. I wish I could hear the whistle now," said he, "I had hoped I should have been carried to heaven long ago; but still I am right." "And then," he said, "I have been telling your other friend over there, that I am not only on the rock, but that I am cemented to the rock, and that the cement is as hard as the rock, so there is no fear of my perishing; unless the rock falls, I cannot; unless the gospel perishes, I cannot perish." Now, here was a man attacked by Satan, he did not tell me of the bitter conflicts he had within, I know they were severe enough; he was anxious to bear a good testimony to the faithfulness of his gracious Lord; but you see, it was his God that was his stronghold; he ran to this — the immutability, the faithfulness, the truthfulness, the mightiness of that God upon whose arm he leaned.
If we will do the same, we can always find an attribute of God to oppose to each suggestion of the Evil One. "God will leave you," says the Evil One. "You old liar, he cannot, for he is a faithful God." "But you will perish after all." "O you vile deceiver, that can never be, for he is a mighty God and strong to deliver." "But one of these times he will abhor you." "No; you false accuser and father of lies, that cannot be, for he is a God of love." "The time shall happen when he shall forget you." "No, traitor; that cannot be, for he is a God omniscient, and knows and sees all things." I say, thus we may rebut every mischievous slander of Satan, running still into the character of God as our strong tower.
Brethren, even when the Lord himself chastens us, it is most blessed to appeal against God to God. Do you understand what I mean? He smites us with his rod, but then to look up and say, "Father, if I could believe what your rod seems to say, I might say you loved me not; but I know you are a God of love, and my faith tells me that you loved me none the less because of that hard blow." See here, brethren, I will put myself in the case a moment — Lo, He spurns me as though he hated me; drives me from his presence; gives me no caresses; denies me sweet promises; shuts me up in prison, and gives me the water of affliction and the bread of distress; but my faith declares, "He is such a God that I cannot think harshly of him; he has been so good to me in the past, that I know he is good now, and in the teeth of all his providences, even when he puts a black mask over his face, I still believe that, "Behind a frowning providence, He hides a smiling face." But, friends, I hope you know, I hope each of us may know by experience, the blessed art of running into the bosom of God and hiding therein. This word to the sinner who has not yet found peace. Do not you see, man, the Christian is not saved by what he is, but by what his God is, and this is the groundwork of our comfort — that God Is Perfect, not that we are perfect.
When I preached last Thursday night about the snuffers of the temple, and the golden snuffer trays, and the necessity there was for the lamps in the sanctuary to be trimmed, one foolish woman said, "Ah, you see, according to the minister’s own confession, these Christians are as bad as the rest of us, they have many faults; oh!" said she, "I dare say I shall be as well off at the last as they will." Poor soul! she did not see that the Christian’s hope does not lie in what he is, but in what Christ is; our trust is not in what we suffer, but in what Jesus suffered; not in what we do, but in what He has done. It is not our name, I say again, that is a strong tower to us, it is not even our prayers, it is not our good works; it is the name, the promise, the truth, the work, the finished righteousness of our God in Christ Jesus. Here the believer finds his defense, and nowhere besides. Run sinner, run, for the castle gate is free to all who seek a shelter, be they who they may.
II. By your leave I shall turn to the second point. HOW THE RIGHTEOUS AVAIL THEMSELVES OF THIS STRONG TOWER. They RUN into it.
Now, running seems to me to imply that they do not stop to make any preparation. You will remember our Lord Jesus Christ said to his disciples, that when the Romans surrounded Jerusalem, he that was on the house-top was not to come down into his house, but to run down the outer staircase, and escape. So the Christian, when he is attacked by his enemies, should not stop for anything, but just run into his God and be safe. There is no need for you to tarry until you have prepared your mind, until you have performed sundry ablutions, but run man straight away at once. When the pigeons are attacked by the hawk, their better plan is not to parley, nor to hesitate but swift as they can cut the air fly to the dove-cote. So be it with you. Leave fools to parley with the fiend of hell; but as for you, fly to your God, and enter into his secret places until the tempest be over and past. A gracious hint this to you anxious souls who are seeking to fit yourselves for Jesus. Away with such legal rubbish, run at once; you are safe in following the good example of the righteous.
This running appears to me to imply, that they have nothing to carry. A man who has a load, the heavier the load may be, the more will he be impeded in his flight. But the righteous run, like racers in the games, who have thrown off everything, their sins they leave to mercy, and their righteousness to the moles and bats. If I had any righteousness I would not carry it, but run to the righteousness of Christ without it; for my own righteousness must be a drag upon me which I could not bear. Sinners I know, when they come to Christ, want to bring tons of good works, wagon loads of good feelings, and fitnesses, and repentings, and such like; but the righteous do no such thing; they just give up every thing they have of their own, and count it but dross and dung, that they may run to Christ and be found in him. Gospel righteousness lies in all in Jesus, not in the believer.
It seems to me too, that this expression not only implies a lack of preparation, and having nothing to carry, but it suggests that fear quickens them. Men do not run to a castle unless they are afraid. But when the avenger of death is close behind, then swiftly they fly. It is marvellous how godly fear helps faith. There is a man sinking there in the river; he cannot swim, he must be drowned! See! see he is going down! We push him a plank; with what a clutch he grasps it; and the more he is convinced that he has no power to float, the more firmly does he grip at this one hope. Fear may even drive a man, I say, to faith, and lend him wings to fly, where else he might have crept with laggard feet. The flight is the flight of fear, but the refuge is the refuge of faith. O. sinner, if the righteous fly, what ought your pace to be?
Again, it seems to me that there is great eagerness here, as if the Christian did not feel safe until he had entered into his God. And therefore, as the stag pursued by the hounds quickens its flight by reason of the baying of the dogs, as the clamor grows louder, and louder, see how the stag leaps from crag to crag, dashes through the stream, flies over yonder hill, is lost in yonder brake, and anon springs through the valley; so the Christian flies to his dear God for safety, when the hounds of hell, and the dogs of temptation are let loose against him. Eagerness! Where indeed shall the like be found? "As the dear pants after the water brooks, so pants my soul after you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God? O convinced sinner, what should your eagerness be if thus the righteous pant for God?
Brethren, I may add here, that there is an absence of all hesitation. He runs. You know, if we need somebody to help us, we put our hand to our brow, and consider, "Let us see, where shall we go? I am in great straits, to whom shall I fly? Who will be the best friend to me?" The righteous never ask that question, at least when they are in a right mind they never do; but the moment their trouble comes they run at once to their God, for they feel that they have full permission to repair to him; and again they feel they have nowhere else to fly. "To whom, or where should I go, if I would turn from you," is a question which is its own answer. Then understand, in our text there is eagerness, the absence of all hesitation, there is fear, and yet there is courage; there is no preparation, there is the flinging aside every burden. "The righteous runs into his high tower, and is safe."
Beloved, I will leave that point, when I have just said, please to remember that when a man gets into a castle, he is safe because of the impregnability of the castle; he is not safe because of the way in which he entered into the castle. You hear some man inside saying, "I shall never be hurt, because I came into the castle the right way." You will tell him, "No, no, no, it is not the way you came into the castle but the castle itself is our defense." So some of you may be thinking, "I do come to Christ, but I am afraid that I do not come aright." But it is not your coming, it is Christ that saves you. If you are in Christ, I do not care a pin how you got in, for I am sure you could not get in except by the door; if you are once in, he will never throw you out; he will never drive away a soul that comes unto him, for any reason whatsoever.
Your safety does not lie in how you came, for in very truth, your safety is in Him. If a man should run into a castle and carry all the jewels of a kingdom with him, he would not be safer because of the jewels; and if another man should run in with hardly a fresh suit of clothes with him, he would not be any the more in danger because of his raggedness. It is the castle, it is the castle, not the man. The solid walls, the strong bastions, the frowning ramparts, the mighty munitions, these make up the defense, not the man, nor yet the man’s wealth, nor yet the way the man came. Beloved, it is most true that salvation is of the Lord, and whosoever shall look out of self tonight, whosoever shall look to Christ only, shall find him to be a strong tower, he may run into his Lord and be safe.
III. And now for our third and closing remark. You that have Bibles with margins, just look at them. You will find that the second part of the text is put in the margin thus — "The righteous runs into it, and is set aloft." Our first rendering is, "The righteous runs into it, and is safe" — there is the matter of fact. The other rendering is, "He is set aloft " — there is the matter of joyous experience.
1. Now first let us see to the matter of fact. The man that is sheltered in his God — a man that dwells in the secret places of the tabernacle of the Most High, who is hidden in his pavilion, and is set upon a rock, he is safe; for, first, who can hurt him? The Devil? Christ has broken his head. Life? Christ has taken his life up to heaven; for we are dead, and "our life is hid with Christ in God." Death? No; the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. "O death, where is your sting? O grave, where is your victory?" The law? That is satisfied, and it is dead to the believer, and he is not under its curse. Sin? No; that cannot hurt the believer, for Christ has slain it. Christ took the believer’s sins upon himself, and therefore they are not on the believer any more.
Christ Took the Believer’s Sins, and Threw Them into the Red Sea of His Atoning Blood; the depths have covered them, not one of them is left. All the sin the believer has ever committed is now blotted out, and a debt that is cancelled can never put a man in prison; a debt that is paid, let it be ever so heavy, can never make a man an insolvent — it is discharged, it has ceased to be. "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifies. Who is he that condemns? It is Christ that died, yes rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us." Who can harm us? Let him have permission to do what he will; what is there that he can do?
Who again has the power to reach us? We are in the hand of Christ. What arrow shall penetrate his hand to reach our souls? We are under the skirts of Deity! What strength shall tear away the mantle of God to reach his beloved? Our names are written on the hands of Jesus, who can erase those everlasting lines? We are jewels in Immanuel’s crown. What thievish fingers shall steal away those jewels? We are in Christ. Who shall be able to rend us from his innermost heart? We are members of his body. Who shall mutilate the Savior? "I bore you," says God, "as on eagles wings." Who shall smite through the breast of the Eternal One, heaven’s great eagle? He must first do it ere he can reach the eaglets, the young sons of God, begotten unto a lively hope. Who can reach us? God interposes; Christ stands in the way; and the Holy Spirit guards us as a garrison.
Who shall stand against the Omnipotent? Tens of thousands of created puissances must fall before him for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength. What weapon is there that can be used against us? Shall they kill us? Then we begin to live. Shall they banish us? Then we are but nearer to our home. Shall they strip us? How can they rend away the garment of imputed righteousness? Shall they seize our property? None can touch our treasure since it is all in heaven! Shall they scourge us? Sweet shall be the smart when Christ is present with us? Shall they cast us into a dungeon? Where shall the free spirit find a prison? What fetters can bind the man who is free in Christ? Shall the tongue attack us? Every tongue that rises against us in judgment we shall condemn. I know not what new weapon can be formed, for certain it is that the anvil of the Church has broken all the hammers that were ever used to smite it, and remains uninjured still.
The believer is — he must be safe. I said this morning, that if the believer in Christ be not saved for ever, then, beloved, there is no meaning whatever in God’s Word; and I say it once again, and I say it without any word of apology for so doing- I could never receive that book as the book of God at all, if it could be proved to me that it did not teach the doctrine of the safety of those that trust in Christ. I could never believe that God would speak in such a manner as to make tens of thousands of us, yes millions of us, believe that He would keep us, and yet after all he should cast us away. Nor do I believe that he would use words which, to say the very least, seem to teach final perseverance if he had not intended to teach us the doctrine. All the Arminian divines that ever lived cannot prove the total apostasy of believers; they can attack some other points of the Calvinistic doctrine; there are some points of our form of doctrine which apparently are far more vulnerable. God forbid we should be so foolish as to deny that there are difficulties about every system of theology, but about the perseverance of the saint there is no difficulty. It is as easy to overthrow an opponent here as it would be to pierce with a spear through a shield of pasteboard. Be you confident, believer, that this is God’s truth, that they who trust in God shall be as Mount Zion which shall never be removed, but abides for ever.
2. But now we conclude by noticing that our text not only teaches us our safety, but our experience of it. "He shall set him up aloft." The believer in his high-days, and they ought to be every day, is like an eagle perched aloft on a towering crag. Yonder is a hunter, down below, who would fain strike the royal bird; he has his rifle with him; but his rifle would not reach one third of the way; so the royal bird looks down upon him; sees him load and prime, and aim; and looks in quiet contempt on him, not intending even to take the trouble to stretch one of his wings; he sees him load again, hears the bullet down below, but he is quite safe, for he is up aloft. Such is the faithful Christians state before God- He can look down upon every trial and temptation; upon every adversary and every malicious attack, for God is his strong tower, and "he is set up aloft."
When some people go to the newspaper and write a very sharp, bitter, and cutting letter against the gospel minister, oh, think they, "How he will feel that; how that will cut him to the quick!"
And yet, if they had seen the man read it through, double it up, and throw it into the fire, saying, "What a mercy it is to have somebody taking notice of me;" if they could see the man go to bed and sleep all the better because he thinks he has had a high honor conferred on him, for being allowed to be abused for Christ, surely they would see that their efforts are only "hate’s labor lost." I do not think our enemies would take so much trouble to make us happy, if they knew how blessed we are under their malice. "You have prepared a table before me in the presence of my enemies," said David. Some soldiers never eat so well as when their enemies are looking on; for there is a sort of gusto about every mouthful which they eat, as they seem to say, "snatched from the jaw of the lion, and from the paw of the bear, and in defiance of you all, in the name of the Most High God I feast to the full, and then set up my banner." The Lord sets his people up aloft.
There are many Christians who do not appear to be much up aloft. You meet them at the food market, and they say, "Wheats do not pay as they used to; farming is no good to anybody." Hear others, after those gales, those equinoctial gales, when so many ships have gone down, say, "Ah! you may well pity us poor fellows that have to do with shipping, dreadful times these, we are all sure to be ruined." See many of our tradesmen — " This Exhibition has given us a little spurt, but as soon as this is over there will be nothing doing; trade never was so dull." Trade has been dull ever since I have been in London, and that is nine years! I do not know how it is, but our friends are always losing money, yet they get on pretty comfortably too. Some I know begun with nothing; and they are getting pretty rich now, but, it is all with losing money, if I am to believe what they tell me. Surely this is not sitting up aloft; surely this is not living up on high.
This is a low kind of life for a child of God. We should not have liked to see the Prince of Wales in his boyhood playing with the ragged children in the street, and I do not suppose you would like to see him now among coal-heavers at a hustling match. Nor should the child of God be seen pushing and grasping as if this world were all, always using that muck-rake to scrape together the things of this world; instead of in full satisfaction, being content with such things as he has, for God has said, "I will never leave you nor forsake you." I am not a little ashamed of myself that I do not live more on high, for I know when we get depressed in spirits and down cast, and doubting, we say many unbelieving and God- dishonoring words. It is all wrong. We ought not to stay here in these marshes of fleshly doubts. We ought never to doubt our God. Let the heathen doubt his God, for well he may, but our God made the heavens.
What a happy people we ought to be! When we are not, we are not true to our principles. There are ten thousand arguments in Scripture for happiness in the Christian; but I do not know that there is one logical argument for misery. Those people who draw their faces down, and like the hypocrites pretend to be of a sad countenance, these, I say, cry, "Lord, what a wretched land is this, that yields us no supplies." I should think they do not belong to the children of Israel; for the children of Israel find in the wilderness a rock following them with its streams of water, and manna dropping every day, and when they need them there are the quails, and so the wretched land is filled with good supplies. Let us rather rejoice in our God. I should not like to have a serving man who always went about with a dreary countenance, because do you know people would say, "What a bad master that man has." And when we see Christians looking so sad, we are apt to think they cannot have a good God to trust to. Come, beloved, let us change our notes, for we have a strong tower and are safe. Let us take a walk upon the ramparts, I do not see any reason for always being down in the dungeon, let us go up to the very top of the ramparts, where the banner waves in the fresh air, and let us sound the clarion of defiance to our foes again, and let it ring across the plain, where yonder pale white-horsed rider comes, bearing the lance of death; let us defy even him.
Ring out the note again; salute the evening, and make the outgoings of the morning to rejoice. Warder, upon the castle-top, shout to your companion yonder, and let every tower and every turret of the grand old battlements be vocal with the praise of him who has said —
"Munitions of stupendous rock,
Your dwelling-place shall be;
There shall your soul without a shock
The wreck of nature see."
Sinner, Again I say the door is open--Run to the mercy of god in Christ and be safe!
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