The Eternal God the Refuge of His Saints 2
Back to J. C. Philpot Sermons
II. But I must not linger here. I must go on to the other statement, equally full of Gospel truth, if I am able to unfold it– "And underneath are the everlasting arms." How Moses brought before the people the eternity of God. He will have nothing to do with time. What is time? A fragment, merely like the foam of the sea compared with the mighty ocean. The ocean is eternity; time is merely the foam upon the wave. "Underneath are the everlasting arms." And depend upon it, if the everlasting arms are underneath the saints of God– for it is of and to them that the words are spoken– they are there for some purpose. Let us see if we can find some of those purposes for which these everlasting arms are underneath them.
1. You are burdened with SIN. Guilt lies hard and heavy upon your conscience; you feel what a wretch you are and have been; you sink at times very low in your soul under the weight of your iniquities and backslidings, in thought, word, and deed; you need something to support your troubled mind, and relieve your anxious heart from it. Now, this very burden under which you sink so low, is laid upon your conscience for an express purpose. God has laid everlasting arms underneath your tried, condemned, and guilty soul, that your very guilt may bring you down upon them. You would not need, still less, would not prize everlasting arms spread beneath you, unless your guilt pressed down your soul so heavily as to make you sink down into them and fall upon them with your whole weight.
Few sink low enough to feel the everlasting arms underneath. They have still some strength left of their own; they are not thoroughly helpless; they cannot bear the thought of ever sinking, sinking, sinking, as if they would sink to where there was no bottom, or as if nothing were beneath them but the very pit of hell. They do not know, they do not feel, that everlasting arms are spread beneath to catch them, so to speak, before they fall, and bear them up, even as on eagle's wings. They, therefore, try to struggle out of them, like a timorous child that cannot trust its mother to hold it up. They don't see they must sink low, very low, to fall upon the everlasting arms.
They are like a person who cannot swim, that has fallen into a river, and who is often drowned by his struggles in the water, and his very trying to save himself. How often it has happened, that a drowning man has defeated the attempt to save him, by struggling with his deliverer, who could have borne him easily to the shore if he were but passive. His rescuer has, therefore, to sometimes wait until the man has nearly gone, that when his struggles have ceased, then he may lay his strong arms beneath him, and bear him safe to land. Is it not better that he should passively fall into the arms of the strong swimmer, who has gone in to his rescue, than lose his life by struggling to save himself? Of course, this is but a figure, and therefore you will not press it too far, or surmise from it, that I think any saint of God can perish.
But do you not find, if you carefully examine the movements of your own heart that you are still struggling in some strength of your own; that you have not given up all your own righteousness, or some lurking hope of gaining the favor of God by your prayers and supplications, and thus are really making good works out of them? If so, like a drowning man struggling in the water, you are wasting your strength by your attempts to swim, and, perhaps, drinking in the water that may drown you. Sink, sink, sink, and then you will find the everlasting arms underneath.
2. But again, you have many AFFLICTIONS. "O," you think, "there never was a poor wretch like me. Wave upon wave, billow upon billow roll over me. Sometimes trials in providence, then trials in my family, then trials in my soul; trials with the children of God, trials with the men of the world; and my poor body often as much afflicted as my soul. Painful days, and sleepless nights seem allotted to me, and such a sense of bodily weakness and exhaustion as I cannot describe, making every little exertion a difficulty and a burden. Was there ever such a poor, afflicted creature as I?" You need the everlasting arms underneath. What else can support you under your distressing afflictions? What else can bear you up under your severe and cutting trials? You are looking sometimes to this or that friend, this or that Christian brother or sister to get some help from them. But what can man do for you? Let man try it. Are man's arms everlasting arms? Are your arms everlasting arms? Who has everlasting arms but the eternal God? And why should the everlasting arms be underneath unless there were afflictions to bring you down upon them?
God puts affliction upon affliction to bring the soul down, that it may fall into and upon the everlasting arms, and find how firm and strong they are. And have you not often found it so? How many trials in Providence you have been brought through. How conspicuously the Lord has appeared in this and that instance, so that your unbelief and infidelity were, for the time at least, thoroughly silenced, and faith saw the hand of God so clearly that you felt as if you could never doubt again. Have you not had many sweet supports on your bed of languishing, many precious seasons when you could bless God for laying upon you his afflicting hand? And have you not found that strength was always given to you according to your day, that with every trial power was given you to bear it, and that out of your deepest afflictions came your greatest blessings? Why are you not in hell? Do you not deserve to be there? Why still upon praying ground, with a good hope through grace, and your soul waiting for the Lord to appear, more than those that watch for the morning? If these arms have once supported you, will they not support you again? Would they be everlasting if they could part asunder and let you fall through? Rest upon them and you will find how strong they are.
3. But you say, "I have so many TEMPTATIONS." Well, do you expect to go to heaven without temptation? What does James say upon this point? "My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into diverse temptations." "Aye, but my temptations are so peculiar." You may think so, but do we not read that "there has no temptation taken you but such as is common to man?" And do we not also read, "But God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted above that you are able; but will with the temptation make a way to escape, that you may be able to bear it?" (1 Cor.10:13.) "Ah, but I am so peculiar." Well, then, you are one of those peculiar people who think, and feel, and are different from everybody else. "I cannot tell anybody what my temptations are." It is good you cannot, but you can tell God. Was not the Lord tempted on all points like as we are, yet without sin? Don't speak, then, as if your temptations are so peculiar that nobody else was tempted like you. The blessed Lord was. But this is the grand point– do your temptations bring you down upon the everlasting arms? Can you grapple with your temptations yourself? "No," say you, "I cannot." Well, then, your temptations bring you down upon the everlasting arms, and these arms will support you under them and bring you through them.
4. But there is a day to come upon us all; a day in which we shall specially need the everlasting arms to be underneath; and that is a bed of DEATH. It may be a bed of languishing, a bed of long and painful illness, when the poor body may be racked with torture, or brought down to such a state of weakness and suffering, that life itself shall be a burden. Perhaps, too, it may be a season of much darkness of mind, though we should not anticipate unknown evils, and God may be better to us than all our fears. But shall we not need, if we never really felt our need before, everlasting arms underneath both body and soul in that day? A languishing body, a sinking soul, a holy God above, and a conscience naked and open before his eye, death in sight, eternity in prospect– shall we not, then, need everlasting arms to bear us up through the dark valley and land us safe through Jordan on the happy shore?
How many of our dear friends have found upon dying beds everlasting arms! How these everlasting arms were so sensibly spread underneath their afflicted bodies and their believing hearts, that they could die in peace, with a sweet testimony of pardoned sin, and that their souls were going to glory. What could human arms do for them then? The soft arms of wife, the strong arms of husband, the tender arms of mother, or the kind arms of friends, what could those arms do for them, vitally and spiritually, when they lay upon their dying pillow? But underneath them were the everlasting arms, and those arms held them up and bore them through, and landed them safely in eternal bliss.
III. But I must pass on to the PROMISE– "And he shall thrust out the enemy from before you." This was true literally of the Canaanites and other nations whom God thrust out before his people; and what he promised to do for them (and did accomplish in a literal and temporal sense), he has promised to do for us, spiritually, and will do it as effectually, who have followed by faith into their place.
"He shall thrust out the enemy from before you." You will often hear people of a murmuring, fretful, repining spirit, of whom, alas! there are too many in the Church of God, continually complaining "I have so many enemies." No doubt you have your enemies, and so we have all. It is one of our evidences that we are on the Lord's side, if we are hated of all men for his namesake. But I will tell you where you have an enemy, and a greater enemy than ever you have found yet in man or woman– yourself! I have said what I have often felt, that I could do myself more harm in five minutes than all my enemies could do me in fifty years. I have had many enemies– do I worry about them? Not a whit! Have they hurt me? You, who have known me so many years, know whether they have hurt me or not. Where are all the books that have been written against me? Sunk and forgotten, and their authors either mostly dead, or sorry and ashamed that they ever wrote them. Of course my flesh has felt their cruel sayings and hard speeches, but I have never really felt anything which they have said or written, unless it touched my conscience, and I had deserved it. I desire not to fear my enemies, but to fear God, to fear myself. I don't fear enemies unless I give them reason. If I myself tip the arrow with a feather from my own wing, I may well fear my enemies; but if I give no real ground of attack to my enemies, I need not fear what they may do or say. I fear myself more than them all, knowing what I am as a sinner, the strength of sin and the power of temptation. But be sure of this, that you are the worst enemy you ever had; and you, who know your hearts, know it to be so.
Well, therefore, has the Lord said in the text, "the enemy," instead of "the enemies." Your sin, your lust, your covetousness, your pride, your self-righteousness, everything in you that works against God and godliness– this is "the enemy" which God has promised to thrust out from before you.
You observed, perhaps, in the chapter which I read this morning (Deut. 7) that the Lord promised to put out the nations before Israel "by little, and little" (verse 22.) It was not all done at once; and we have a remarkable reason given in the book of Judges, why so many enemies were left. It was "to prove Israel by them; even as many of Israel as had not known all the wars of Canaan, that the generations of the children of Israel might know to teach them war, at the least, such as before knew nothing thereof." (Judges 3:1, 2.) Thus, there were two reasons why these enemies were left in Canaan–
1, to prove Israel by them, to know whether they would hearken unto the commandments of the Lord; and
2, to teach them how to fight. The Lord has, therefore, left this enemy in our heart, for the same two wise reasons; but he will thrust him out, little by little, so that he shall not have dominion over us.
Once he was in full possession, held sovereign dominion of all our heart and affections. The strong man kept his palace, and his goods were at peace. But a stronger than he came, dispossessed him, turned him out, and divided his spoils. And the strong man armed has not possession of the palace of the Son of God now. But still he knocks at the door, peeps in at the window, and would creep in at the cellar hole, unless kept out by the mighty power of God. But God has promised to thrust him out; that Esau shall have no portion with Jacob; that the Canaanite shall not be forever in the house of the Lord of Hosts. And every token for good, every sweet evidence, every visitation of the Lord's mercy and goodness, is a thrusting out of the enemy of our souls.
But observe, also, that it shall be "from before you." You shall see that God himself has done it. He will make it manifest before your eyes and in your conscience that he is thrusting out the enemy. He will make you first feel that he is an enemy. You shall see something of his accursed designs; how sin has deceived you, betrayed you, brought guilt upon your conscience; how God, in consequence, has hidden his face, and made you a burden to yourself. You shall be brought to feel, and say, "There is nothing I hate so much as my own vile heart, my own dreadfully corrupt nature. O what an enemy do I carry in my own bosom. Of all my enemies, he is surely the worst; of all my foes, he is the most subtle and strong." Now, as you feel these things, God is thrusting out this enemy from before you. He shows you his hideous face beneath his fair mask, manifests his plots, discovers his contrivances; and as he does this by his Spirit and grace, there is a thrusting out this enemy that he may not dwell in your heart in power.
IV. But there goes together with this sweet and blessed promise, a solemn charge, which is closely connected with it– "And shall say, Destroy them." God takes us, so to speak, into partnership with himself in this matter; to enlists us on his side, puts weapons into our hand, and bids us go forth in his strength to make use of them, and so do his work. As Moses bade the Levites arm themselves against their brethren and slay every man his friend and companion; so God the Spirit puts into our hands the weapons whereby we are made willing to destroy these enemies, though they are our own flesh and blood, and a very part of ourselves.
And why are we willing to do this work, and smite them hip and thigh, and if we could, would destroy their very life? Because they have been and are such a plague to us; because they have wrought in our heart such havoc; and because we have found and felt them to be enemies of God and man.
Now have you not sometimes felt in your soul as though you could take your lusts by the neck and dash their heads against a stone? Have you not felt you could, if possible, take out of your breast this vile, damnable heart, lay it upon the ground, and stamp upon it? And when tempted with pride, or unbelief, or infidelity, or blasphemy, or any hateful lust, how you have cried out again and again with anguish of spirit, "O this heart of mine!" Upon your knees some blasphemous thought has rushed in; in reading the Scriptures some infidel suggestion has darted into your soul whether it is the inspired word of God; in talking to a friend, some loose desire has crossed your mind; some vile thought, only fit for the worst haunts of sin, or a cell in Newgate prison.
"O," you say, "was there ever a heart like mine? O that I could take it out of my bosom, and have no more to do with it. I would be holy in body and soul; but O this heart of mine, it has no more holiness in it by nature, than the very devil himself." Now this makes you understand the charge– "Destroy them." God says, as it were, "Take my weapons into your own hands, and execute vengeance upon your sins, that I may see your sincerity; not sparing one of them, as Saul spared Agag, but hewing them all down, without pity or mercy." Now, when we hate them, when we would, if possible, have no more to do with them, and can say to this lust, idol, or temptation, "O you filthy creature, What an enemy you are to my soul; O that I could forever be done with you," here you are doing what God commands. "Destroy them," God says; "This is what I charge you to do."
But if you are indulging your lusts, feeding your pride, gratifying your covetousness, seeking how to satisfy every base desire– are you fulfilling the charge, "Destroy them?" You never will fulfill that charge until you learn what an enemy sin is in itself, and what an enemy it has been personally to you. But when you have suffered, groaned, sighed, cried, loathed yourself in dust and ashes, and wondered at the patience of God, that hell is not now your destiny, then he gives strength and grace, and you are made willing that these lusts of yours should be destroyed. This indeed will not be accomplished until death, for only "Death that puts an end to life, will put an end to sin."
But let us now see, by way of conclusion, how the whole text harmonizes, and how we have in it a description of the work of grace from first to last. First, we have the poor sinner without a refuge, brought to see that without a shelter for his guilty head he must perish under the wrath of God. The eternal God opens his arms as his refuge; he flees to that refuge– "I flee unto you to hide me." "The name of the Lord is a strong tower– the righteous runs into it and is safe." The eternal God becomes his refuge.
He is led up and down this world; trials, temptations, and afflictions are his portion here below. Now come "the everlasting arms" to bear him up. Grace still goes on with its blessed work. He finds the enemy strong within. God fulfils the promise to thrust him out. And then, as he gets further on in the blessed things of God, he feels more and more a holy indignation against himself, a solemn vengeance upon his cruel sins, and he is made willing to take them in his own hands, if power were given him, and to dash them against the stones. And then he fulfils the charge– "Destroy them."
Thus the words take in the work of grace from first to last, are a sweet epitome of the dealings of God with the soul, and lead our thoughts to the eternal God as our refuge, to see what this God is in himself, what this God has promised, and what this God will surely perform.
Back to J. C. Philpot Sermons