SAVED BY HOPE -Burns, William Chalmers

CHAPTER 6  

It is a peculiar complication of trial when we have to labour on through much tribulation, and yet see no fruit of labour. It is then that we get at the meaning of that expression – saved by hope. We require to have this hope in exercise, living on the future, looking forward to the crown – at the coming of the Lord. Look forward, desponding labourers, to the universal establishment of His kingdom, but above all, to His own second coming. Take courage, and He will strengthen thine heart! Blinded sinners cannot wait for their portion: they must be at it; they must have it now. This explains the fearful declension of multitudes from the ways of God. One goes away, and walks no more with Jesus; another turns to the world’s esteem; another must have its amusements; another grasps its degraded pleasures, and drinks them up like water; another becomes a Demas, and says, “I must get my fill of this world at all hazards, and if I get the other too, so much the better.” Brethren, where is Demas to-night?

What’s the world to Demas to night, if

HE HAS LOST BOTH WORLDS!

But there is another class of persons who cannot wait God’s time, and who must have something more in possession than He would appoint. They will not wait simply for light from above, and so they run hastily
into any set of opinions, and become formalists, approving doctrines which the Lord’s poor ones do not like, and too often they end in teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. Little confidence is to be placed
in such professors; I would rather take the judgment of some deeply-taught believer, whom the Lord is chastening and teaching out of his law, than of the greatest divine who is not deeply taught within. Such
poor ones know the Shepherd’s voice, and they will not hear any other. Bring as many arguments to them as you like, and tell them that what you are trying to prove is as clear as day; “Never mind,” they will say, “it’s
not the Shepherd’s voice!”When those who are not truly established in the ways of God hear anything new that seems to suit their
fancy, it is all plain and easy to them; they take it up at once; they think they can at a glance see what is right and what is wrong, or what is scriptural. The Lord’s people are seldom so ready to give an opinion, but are found creeping out of sight, and hiding themselves in him. Every kind of new doctrine does not find an entrance to their hearts; they know what is what in the preaching of the gospel. They have some clear notions
in their heads and hearts about saving truth that will not accommodate themselves to novelties. It’s not every kind of gospel that goes down with them.Few of us come to the pulpit to speak of the things which they have both seen and heard at the Lord’s mouth. On the other hand, we could envy the teaching which He gives to some. They are kept down and
down, and get safely into port; whereas the tall mast and sail catch the wind and lead into danger. The best ballast for the vessel is a sanctified heart. This is the security of his weak and despised people, who, as aminister said to me lately, when they have not the fulfillment of the promise to live upon, are contented to live upon the unfulfilled promise. These are they who have learned to live upon the unfulfilled promise. These are they who have learned to live by hope.All do not thus wait. Some look backwards, and say, There’s no use waiting; and some go away
altogether. Truly humbled souls will wait on to the end, watching for the Lord’s word, looking upwards, in the darkest night, though it be with fainting hearts, and weeping eyes, and mourning consciences, — lying
down at the posts of his doors, at the gates of his mercy. Some men’s faith stretches the longer it is tried, and grasps the promise closer, and will rather die than disbelieve. Believe it, the vessel that contains the blessing is widening and widening, that it may come down at last in a mighty flood upon the thirsty ground. / cannot wait; that’s Esau’s voice. He sees Jacob with a mess of pottage, and sells his birthright.

Sometimes a voice comes to ministers, saying, “Stop working; no good will come. Give up, let men alone; they deserve it! Let them sleep! Let them perish!” That’s the devil’s voice! All he wants is to get us set to
sleep, and the best way to attain his end is to reason thus within us. Think you that he would take this trouble were it not that he knew – and Satan knows it well – that the Lord liveth; that He rideth upon the heaven in our help? Yes, He liveth ever, and that is what Satan dreads; He liveth to bless and save his people, and to make them wise to win souls for Christ. The Lord liveth; and blessed be my rock: and let the God of my salvation be exalted.”Though it were to come to this, that any child of His were to look around, and with a bursting heart were constrained to cry that Christians are asleep, and ministers lifeless; and though the fainting spirit found not
so much as one living soul who was getting grace to trample on sin, suffering, and persecution, for the Lord’s sake, still, with a sleeping Church and ruined world all in sight, what could he do but say within himself, “Cease thou from man; cease thou from man!” — and point faith’s finger to the open heaven, exclaiming, “The Lord liveth; and blessed be my rock: and let the God of my salvation be exalted.” Although thousands should find in his finished work only a rock to split upon, and a stumbling-stone, yet “He is the rock, his work is perfect.

Hang, then, on his word of promise. Believe it to the last. Turn not back to your lusts; turn not back to the world; turn not back to self-righteousness. Wait patiently; wait long. If you wait to the end, it will be to confess anew that you are ashamed of your unbelief, and of your low, hard thoughts of him; it will be to be convinced anew that He is just the same covenant-keeping God, and that He never can take back a promise
He has given –

“Oh! but the counsel of the Lord
Doth stand forever sure.
That word, that name of his, is a strong tower, and a living refuge, eternal in the heavens. That word will stand; and when the world is all going to pieces, it shall endure, it shall save, it shall bless every soul that believeth on the Lord Jesus. To some people, the life of hope is a very wearisome one; it is not full enough of present enjoyment to their taste. Humbled souls take a very different view of the matter, knowing that it is
the Spirit that quickeneth us to wait on the Lord, and taking delight in the thought that he helps us to it, and keeps us up when we are ready to sink down and fall.It is not an amazing thing to see a few poor creatures, despised and trodden down by the world, — which looks at them, saying, “They’ll all soon go to pieces; they will give up that strange fancy, and be like one of us again:” — to see them year after year remaining united and like-minded, steadfast as a rock, waiting and persevering to the end? Nothing drives them back, or makes them ashamed of their hope. One of their number, who was, perhaps, the most tried of all, proved this; and he has been handed down as an example of suffering patience to all generations. See him robbed of all he had, and left desolate and naked on the earth. All that afflictions and losses, added to Satan’s temptations, could extort from him was, “What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not received evil?” See his faith in God, and Job had less outward reason for trust in God, perhaps, than any of his saints ever had. He had feared God all the day long, and yet, without apparent cause, he lost all – family, property, possessions – and now his own body
was brought under the rod till it became loathsome and painful in the extreme; his friends spending their strength to try and convince him that he was a hypocrite; all that was left was this wife of his, biding him
curse God and be done with it. But did Job either curse God to please his wife, or give up his integrity to justify the accusations of his friends? Ah no! Job knew and felt that there was something within that diseased body which the worms could not destroy, and some principle of life which death couldn’t reach, abiding in his poor afflicted soul; and, therefore, he could defy them all with this, “I know that my Redeemer liveth.” How many of you are like Job in this? How many of you have that precious confidence in him that He will not, cannot lie, nor alter the thing that is gone out of his mouth? Who has the faith that will cling to his word when all else is failing, and rest on his promise when all beside is untrue?

Pray for us, brethren, that we may neither shrink from duty nor from trial. Can we expect his blessing, if we shut up our labors within bounds which He has not prescribed? Most of us in the ministry are like soldiers living comfortably in barracks during the time of war. Let us not try to escape from the work He gives, or the message He sends; otherwise, we shall be the sufferers. Jonah had to take a very round-about way to Nineveh, from this sin. He did not expect to have to go through the bottom of the sea to it, but still to Nineveh he came, to preach in that great city the preaching which the Lord bade him.