COMMENDATION FOR THE STEADFAST – Charles Spurgeon
COMMENDATION FOR THE STEADFAST
“I know your works: behold, I have set before you an open door, and no man can shut it: for you have a little strength, and have kept My Word, and have not denied My name. Because you have kept the Word of My patience, I also will keep you from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.” — Revelation 3:8, 10.
This is a message to the angel of the Church at Philadelphia, and it is full of instruction for Churches and ministers at this present time. “He that has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says unto the Churches.” The Philadelphian Church was not great, but it was good. It was not powerful, but it was faithful. The Spirit says, “You have a little strength.” Every band of Believers has some strength—weak as we are in ourselves—the very fact of our possessing faith proves that we have a portion of strength. Still, that strength is a matter of degrees, and certain Churches have a little strength—but only a little.
I suppose that the Philadelphian Church had but little strength in the following respects—the number of its members would be small, and it had, therefore, but little strength for undertaking any extensive enterprise which would call for numerous bands of workers. The Brethren needed all their strength concentrated on their home work, for they were few, and the loss of one or two from home evangelization and edification would be greatly felt. A Church may have a very short muster roll and yet it may be very dear to God, who thinks more of quality than of quantity, more of obedience than of numbers.
They had also little strength in the direction of talent. They were not like that famous Church at Corinth, where everybody could teach everybody, but where nobody cared to learn of anyone. They had but small ability to speak with tongues, or work miracles, or teach the Word—but they adhered faithfully to what they had been taught by the Apostles of the Lord. They were not brilliant, but they were sound. Churches with few men of learning or eloquence in them may yet be greatly approved of by the Lord, who cares more for grace than learning, more for faith than talent.
In all probability, they were, like most of the Churches of that day, possessed of very little pecuniary strength. They could do but little where money would be required. They were a company of poor people with no man of means among them, but there are many such Churches that are peculiarly precious to the heart of God, who cares nothing for gold and everything for sincerity. Possibly, they were little, too, in those things which go side by side with grace—I mean in knowledge and in power to utter what they knew. This was a pity, but as it was their misfortune and not their fault, they were not blamed for it.
The Lord does not blame us for having little strength, but for having little love, little faith, little zeal, little consecration. The Philadelphian saints, like the limpet, which has but little strength, stuck firmly to the rock, and they are commended for it. They had little strength, but they kept God’s Word and they did not deny His name. Possibly, if they had felt stronger, they might have presumptuously quit the Word of the Lord for the opinions of men, as the Galatians did—and then they would have lost their reward.
May every Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, whether it has little strength or much, be concerned to be steadfast in the faith—loyal to King Jesus—firm in the truths which Christ has taught us by the Holy Spirit. But, dear friends, as this expression was used to the angel of the Church at Philadelphia, whom I suppose to be the minister of the Church, I do not feel that I shall be doing any violence to the text if I take it in reference to each individual. And I have no doubt that there will be individual Christians present at this time who, though they have but little strength, have kept God’s Word. If so, they will receive a reward for it, according to the grace of God. They have been firm and steadfast in their confession of the faith once delivered unto the saints, and the Lord who gave them the grace to be so, will give them yet more grace as the recompense of their fidelity.
We will speak upon the text tonight, with a view to that, and we shall notice, first, that there is a word of praise—God praises this faithful messenger of the Church. Secondly, He gives him a word of prospect. He says, “I have set before you an open door, and no man can shut it: for you have a little strength, and have kept My Word.” And then, thirdly, we shall speak upon a word of promise which is in the text in the 10th verse—“Because you have kept the Word of My patience, I also will keep you from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.” Oh that my words might call out some faithful ones in these evil days! We need pillars in the house of our God! Where are they to be found?
I. A WORD OF PRAISE
I do not think that we should be so slow as we sometimes are in praising one another. There is a general theory abroad that it is quite right and proper to point out to a Brother all his imperfections, for it will be a salutary medicine to him and prevent his being too happy in this vale of tears. Is it supposed that we shall cheer him on to do better by always finding fault with him? If so, some people ought to be very good by this time, for they have had candid friends in plenty! Find fault with a Brother and he will be kept from growing too proud, and he will, no doubt, go forward blessing you very much for your kind consideration in promoting his humility. Remember, also, that it is much to the increase of brotherly love to have a clear eye to see the imperfections of our friends. Does anyone in his senses really think so? I should suppose that after having given a sufficient trial to that manner of procedure, it would be quite as well, at times, to try another, and to rejoice in everything which we see of grace in our Brothers and Sisters! And sometimes to thank God in their hearing for what we perceive in them that we are sure is the fruit of the Spirit.
If they are what they should be, they will not think so much of our little praises as to be unduly exalted, but they will be sometimes so encouraged as to be nerved to higher and nobler things! If a man deserves my commendation, I am only paying a debt when I give it to him—and it is dishonest to withhold it under the pretence that he would not use the payment rightly. Men who deserve praise can bear it, and some of them even need it! I should not wonder that the kindly words of God’s people may be but a rehearsal of that, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” which will one day sound in their ears. And it may be a useful rehearsal, too, helping them on their weary way.
Good men have many conflicts—let us minister to their comfort. At any rate, the great Head of the Church did not think it unwise to say to the Church at Philadelphia that He thought well of it because it had kept His Word. Let us give honor to whom honor is due and encourage those who are aiming to do right.
What had these Philadelphian Believers done that they should be praised? What they did was this—they kept the Word of God. “You have kept My Word and you have not denied My name.” What does this mean? Does it not mean, first, that they had received the Word of God, for if they had not heard it and held it, they could not have kept it! It was theirs! They heard it and had no wish to hear anything else. It was theirs! They read it and searched it and made it their own. They hoarded up divine knowledge in their memories, preserved it in their affections, used it in their experience, and practiced it in their lives. They were not ashamed of revealed truths of God but, on the contrary, they took it for their possession, their heritage, their treasure, their all!
I trust that many of us can say that the Doctrines of Grace are our jewels, our estate, yes, our very life. God has put us in trust with the Gospel and we will sooner part with all that we have than be false to our trust! It is no small privilege to be taught of the Holy Spirit as to have a taste for the Gospel, a deep attachment to the Truths of the Covenant.
Next, we may be sure that they loved the Word of God. They had an intense delight in it. They appreciated it—they fed upon it. They stored it up as bees store away honey and they were as ready to defend it as bees are to guard their stores. They meditated upon it. They sought to understand it. They took delight in everything which came from the mouth of God.
Men do not keep things which they consider to be valueless! If men in our day had a higher opinion of the Truth of God, they would be more valiant for it. People are always ready to part with that for which they have no esteem, and for this very reason, many are quite willing to give up the Bible to critics and philosophers—those thieves and burglars of faith.
But he that keeps God’s Word, we may be sure, is deeply in love with it! Oh, dear child of God, you may be very little in Israel, but if you love the Word of God there is a something about you in which God takes delight! He sees you at your Bible-reading. He marks you in your endeavors to get at the meaning of His Word. He notes you when you sit down and meditate upon His divine thoughts. And He takes pleasure in your eagerness to know what the will of the Lord is. He says, “I know your works.” And though you may be one of little influence and little ability, yet He is pleased with you because you are pleased with His Word.
More, however, is meant than simply loving the Word of God, though that is no small thing. It means that they believed it, believed it most thoroughly, and so kept it. I am afraid that there are great truths in God’s Word which we do not intelligently believe, but take for granted. We say, “Yes, yes, these doctrines are in the Creed,” and we put them up on the top shelf—and by that very act we lay them aside and do not heartily believe in them for ourselves!
We grow very vexed if anybody denies them, but if there is no controversy over them, we forget them. Is this wise? We call our opponents heterodox and our zeal for orthodoxy comes to the front—and yet, after all, it may be that we have never exercised a personal faith about those doctrines so as to think them out for ourselves!
It is a grand thing to work your passage to a Truth of God, to mine your way to the golden ore by digging and clearing! True Believers may be likened to those mites in the cheese which eat their way into it and penetrate into the center by feeding upon all that lies in their way as they advance. We eat our way into the Word of God! We live upon what we learn, tunneling through the Truth with receptive minds.
The Truth of God is too great for us ever to absorb it all, but daily and hourly we live upon it! We so believe it as to treat it as a matter of fact, valuable for everyday use. This is the surest way to keep it, even to the end. Now, dear child of God, as I have said before, you may have but very little strength. You may often be tempted and tried and cast down. But if you believe the Word of God, there is more for the pleasing of God in a child-like faith than there is in the most glittering profession or in the most showy deeds! Faith is the prize among jewels—the queen of the virtues!
Believe God’s Word and you have worked a God-like work! Believe it when others contradict it and you are a conqueror over them all! Believe it when circumstances seem to make it questionable. Believe it when your own heart fails you. Believe it when your sin and corruption rise within you like a fountain of foul waters and thus shall you give glory to the God of Truth! Still hold on to the promise made to you in the Word of God and to the manifestation of God which is seen in Christ Jesus—and you will be doing your God the honor which He deserves at your hands! And He will say, “I know your works: for you have a little strength, but you have kept My Word.”
Furthermore, in addition to the inner possession and the hearty belief of the Truth, we must be ready to adhere to it at all times. That, perhaps, is the central thought here—“You have kept My Word.” Why, there are great folk among us that never care to believe according to God’s Word at all. They have thought out what they believe—their theology is made out of their own substance, as spiders spin their webs out of their own bowels. But, surely, in everything which concerns the doctrines of our most holy faith, we must make reference to a, “Thus says the Lord.” It is not what I think. It is not what some greater man may think. It is not what may be the consensus of all the enlightened minds of the period! The decision lies with what the Lord has spoken. God’s thoughts are as high above ours as the heavens are above the earth! Dare we drag them down and sit in judgment on them?
If the thought of the age happens to be right, well and good, but it is not upon temporary opinion that we rest. Our faith stands not in the wisdom of man, but in the power of God! What is taught in Holy Scripture is sure Truth to us and every other statement must bow to it. Chillingworth said what ought to be true, though I am afraid that it is not—“The Bible and the Bible alone is the religion of Protestants.” I should like to see a few more of such Protestants! Many say that we ought to keep “abreast of the times”—whatever that may mean—and that there is a certain “spirit of the age,” to which we should be subject. This, to me, is treason against the Sovereign Truth of God. I know of one only spirit to whom I desire to be subject and that is the Spirit of all the ages who never changes. By His teaching we are not only 19 centuries behind the present age, but we come in at the back of all the ages of human history! If we have but little strength, we mean to let the times and the spirits go where they like—we shall keep to the Holy Spirit and to His eternal teachings!
II. A WORD OF PROSPECT
“Behold, I have set before you an open door, and no man can shut it: for you have a little strength, and have kept My Word.”
It seems to me to mean just this—“You have been faithful; therefore I will use you. You have been steadfast; therefore I will employ you.” For a considerable period of human life, it may be God does not give to all of us a field of usefulness, but He provides a field of trial. There are some to whom He opens the gate of usefulness early because He sees in them a spirit that will bear the temptation of success. But in many other cases it is questionable whether they could bear promotion and, therefore, the Lord permits them to be tried in different ways until He sees that they are found faithful—and then He puts them into His service and gives them an opportunity of bearing witness for Him.
Now, dear friend, perhaps up to now you have been perfectly satisfied with holding the Truth of God with all your might and being faithful to it in private and in your own daily life. I want to suggest to you that if you have done this for some time, the time has now arrived when you may go forward to something more. There are opportunities before you, now, which were not there before—these are placed before you, especially, because you have been tried and have been proved faithful. If you will now begin to talk to others about that which you love so well, you will be astonished to find how gladly they will receive it from you.
III. A WORD OF PROMISE
“Because you have kept the Word of My patience, I also will keep you from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.”
Those who keep God’s Word, shall, themselves, be kept from temptation. The Lord returns into His servants’ bosoms that which they render to Him—He gives keeping for keeping.
Now, I shall speak for myself and for you—and I know that we can bear witness that this promise is true. One says to me, “Are you not perplexed about the prevalence of modern thought—the new phase of divinity that has come up of late, and the general progress that is being made towards a new theology? Does it not trouble you?” Not a bit! Modern ideas do not affect me in the slightest. If all men that live or ever shall live should throw away the old Calvinism, there remains one that will hold it, for this reason—that he could not hold any other—I must be crushed out of existence before my convictions of the truth of the Doctrines of Grace in the old-fashioned form can ever be taken from me! I am miserable, wretched, lost, if the Doctrines of Grace are not true! I am joyous, glad, strong, happy if these doctrines are true. I cannot give them up—and especially because as I read, and the more I read—I perceive these things to be written in the Word of God and, therefore, I must hold them.
In this Church we feel very little of the temptation which tries all the world. Very seldom are any of our friends unsettled in their minds, or tormented with these hornets of heresy. “Alas,” said one minister to me, “I see some of my best people becoming skeptical! Are you not worried by seeing the thoughtful ones drifting off into new views?” “No, not at all.” “Why not?” “Because the grace of God keeps our people to their moorings. They know what they believe and they have no desire to change.”
If a man does not believe the Doctrines of Grace, he comes to hear me once and he says, “I am not going there anymore.” He talks to some of you and you are so dogmatic and firmly rooted, he calls you pig-headed and says it is no use arguing with such bigots! And so he goes to argue somewhere else! This is exactly as we would have it! When a bushel is full of wheat, the good corn keeps the chaff out of the measure. This is the Lord’s way of delivering those who keep His Word—thus He shuts them away from the temptation that comes upon others.
He seems to say, “Dear child, since you will not go beyond My written Word, you shall not be tempted to go beyond it. I will cause the enemies of the Truth of God to leave you alone.”