THE ETERNAL TRUTH OF GOD – Charles Spurgeon

THE ETERNAL TRUTH OF GOD

“The truth endures to all generations.” Psalm 100:5.

It was very solemn work this morning to lay bare the sin of unbelief. It was the burden of the Lord to him who had to speak, and it could have been but very small pleasure to those who had to listen. Nevertheless, I trust it was something better than pleasure to many and it drove their souls to pray to God for others. By His grace, sinners were moved, as we already know, to yield up their hearts to the Lord Jesus Christ. After meditating upon the heinousness of this sin—the sin of making God a liar—after even thinking of it, horror took hold upon my soul, and it seemed to me that we ought to have a supplementary sermon tonight in honor of the truth of God. As we have, as it were, cleansed the temple and swept out the dreadful filthiness of giving the Lord the lie, it is now our part to offer a sweet-smelling offering by declaring the faithfulness of the Lord. It is my earnest desire that each one of us may join in the devout exercise and bear our witness that, as far as we have known the Lord, He has been a God of truth to us. We will also rehearse the scriptural testimony to this great and certain fact that God cannot lie—and meditate upon the evidence that in Him, and in all His actions, faithfulness shines in the highest possible perfection. I desire in the courts of the Lord’s house, and in the midst of His people, to extol Him whose counsels of old are faithfulness and truth. We will consider only two points, though those will subdivide into many others, and the first is, that according to the text and according to fact, God is true. And, secondly, that God is true in all generations.

I. GOD IS TRUE

He is true in His very nature. There is no deceit, falsehood, or error in the essential nature of God. It could not be. We, from our very birth, have deceitful hearts, deceitful above all things, and in us, the old serpent who deceived our first parents has fearfully perverted our judgment and turned aside our souls from their integrity. As a result, we often put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. And frequently we believe a lie and reject the truth. But God is not a man that He should lie. His very name is, “The Lord God, abundant in goodness and truth.” This is only a part of His holiness. The angels could not cry, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth,” if God were not true. Admit for a single moment, untruthfulness on the part of God, and you have at once destroyed the wholeness, or holiness, of His ever-blessed and adorable character.

What makes men untruthful? Whatever it may be, it is clear that nothing of the kind can operate with God. When a man tells a lie, it is often through fear—fear of the consequences of the truth. But the eternal Jehovah cannot dread consequences—He is omnipotent—all things are in His hands. When a man utters a lie, he frequently does so because he thinks there is no other way of accomplishing his end. But the infinite wisdom of God is never short of resources—He knows how to accomplish His will and pleasure without adopting the mean devices and paltry schemes of poor pitiful man. Man sometimes promises what he cannot perform and then he is false to his promise. But that can never be the case with the Almighty who has but to speak and it is done—to command and it stands fast. Falsehood is the wickedness—I dare not call it the infirmity—the wickedness of little natures. But as for the Great Supreme, you cannot conceive Him acting in any manner that is otherwise than straightforward, upright, and truthful. He is essentially a God of truth and righteousness. He must be so.

The Lord our God is not only true in His nature, but He is true to His nature. We are not always true to ourselves. I have known a generous man who, in a fit of bad temper, has acted very ungenerously. I have known a man universally admitted to be just and upright who, nevertheless, under pressure, has stooped to an action which he could not justify. And we have read of persons exceedingly kind by nature who, nevertheless, have perpetrated cruel deeds in times of fear. They were not true to themselves. They did actions of which any candid person would say, “This is not like the man—we are astonished that he should do this. He seems to have stepped out of his ordinary path to do something altogether foreign to his better nature.” But the Lord is always true to Himself. You never find Him doing anything that is not godlike. Select the acts of His creation. If He makes an aphid to creep upon a rosebud, you will find traces of infinite wisdom in it—you shall submit the insect to the microscope and discern a wisdom in it as glorious as that which shines in yonder rolling stars. If in providence some minor event comes under your notice, in that event you shall find no deviation from the constant rule of right and love by which the Most High characterizes all His doings.

There are no emergencies with God in which He could be driven to act an untruth. There are no pressures, no difficulties, no infirmities which could produce falsehood in Him. “I am Jehovah: I change not,” He says. Find Him where you will, He is what He was and what He ever shall be—the eternal and ever-glorious I AM, over whom circumstances can have no kind of influence—who, indeed, knows nothing of circumstances, for He fills all places, and all times and all ages are present with Him. As for the creatures, they are as nothing in His sight and He is all in all. Ever true, ever true by nature, and true to His nature is the Lord our God, and adored be His thrice holy name. By Jesus Christ, we present to You, O Jehovah, our adoring praise!

Let us further notice that God is true in action. He has been true to the first transaction of which we are aware, namely, the making of the eternal covenant. What God has done in the eternity which we call the past (but which to Him is as the present), we do not fully know. We have no reason to believe that we know much of what God has done. There may be as many other worlds and sorts of beings existent as there are sands upon the sea shore, for all we know. And the Lord may have been occupied in ages past with thousands of glorious plans and economies as yet unrevealed to man. We cannot tell what He does or what He has done. We are creatures of a day and know nothing. We are like insects that are born on a leaf and die amid our fellows at the setting of the sun—but He lives on forever. We talk of the “eternal hills,” but they are babes that were born yesterday, as far as He is concerned. “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever You had formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting You are God.”

We say, “Roll on, you ancient ocean!” but the ocean is not ancient—it is a drop that fell yesterday from the tip of the Creator’s finger. We cannot tell all that the Lord did in the past, but we are told in Scripture that He made a covenant in the olden time with His Son and with us also, who are believers in His Son. And in that covenant the chief point was that He would give His Son to be a ransom for many—that Jesus Christ should lay down His life for His sheep and give Himself for His church. That was the most astounding promise that was ever made. Indeed, all the promises made to men are couched in that. Did He keep it? Did He take the darling of His bosom, the pure and holy Christ, and send Him down to earth to be made in the likeness of sinful flesh? Did He submit that His peer, His equal, the Son of the Highest, should wear the smock frock of a peasant and live among the sons of men as a carpenter’s son? Did He fulfill that wondrous Word and allow that dear Son of His to be nailed to a cross—to die on that gibbet like a common felon? Did He permit Him to slumber in the dust among the dead? He did. Let Bethlehem and Calvary say, “The Lord is true. He has kept His covenant”—“True to His word, He gave His Son To die for crimes which men have done. Blest pledge! He never will revoke A single promise He has spoke.”

But it was a stipulation of that covenant on the Lord’s side that Jesus Christ should have a people who would be His reward for His sufferings. The Father gave to Christ a chosen people—His sheep, His bride. These were to be His. “He shall see of the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied.” Has the divine Father kept that part of His covenant? Beloved, He is keeping it every day. By the preaching of the gospel and by other means in the hand of the Spirit, those for whom Jesus died are being called from among the mass of mankind. They are reconciled to God by the death of Jesus and they are saved. And whenever these present themselves before the throne of God, He looks upon them as forgiven, regards them as one with His beloved Son and members of the body of Christ—and therefore He accepts them in the Beloved. For Christ’s sake, He preserves them. For Christ’s sake, He sanctifies them. For Christ’s sake, He will, by-and-by, glorify them. The covenant of grace has many promises in it, but not one of them has failed. As on Christ’s side, the covenant was kept by His death, so on the Father’s side, the covenant has been kept by the salvation of those whom Jesus redeemed from among men whom He gave Himself a ransom for many.

Oh, beloved, if it could be proven that the covenant of grace had failed. If there had been the smallest faltering in the fulfillment of this divine treaty, then might we speak with bated breath concerning the truthfulness of God, and the sinner would not be so guilty when he makes God a liar. But because in this grand covenant transaction, God has not swerved by so much as one jot or tittle from His promise, let His name be blessed! Praise Him, all you saints in heaven! Praise Him, you saints on earth, for, “His truth endures to all generations.”

God being thus true in His nature and true to His nature—and true to His covenant—He has been true to all His purposes. Whatever God resolved to do, He has done. Whatever He decreed has come to pass. There has been no change in the purpose of God at any time. Straightforward He goes and none can hinder Him. The opposition of men and the opposition of devils are as nothing—these can no more change His plans than an infant’s breath could alter the course of the sun. “Has He said and shall He not do it?” Who are you that hopes to thwart the designs of God? What He resolves to do, who shall dare to censure, much less to oppose? Who is he that shall say unto the Lord, “Your arm is short. You are not able to accomplish Your work”? Behold, His will is omnipotence and He does as He pleases among the angels of heaven and among the inhabitants of this lower world. From the time He planned the whole scheme of providence and grace, nothing has ever made Him alter so much as one single line of it. There it stands, and He is true to it and true He will be, till like a vesture, He shall fold up creation as a worn-out mantle which has answered its wearer’s end.

II. GOD IS TRUE IN ALL GENERATIONS

This fact breaks up into three heads—in the past, in the present, and in the future. I should have to detain you here for a long time if I were to go into that first head at any length. God has been true in the past. The whole of history, sacred and profane, goes to prove that. Take the beginning of our race. God warned Adam and Eve that if they ate of the forbidden fruit they should surely die. He indicated to them therein a spiritual death, which signifies separation from God. In the day they ate thereof they did die—die as to all spiritual life and Adam, instead of welcoming God, went to hide himself among the trees of the garden and felt that he was naked. God then told him that in the sweat of his face he should eat bread and that his wife should bring forth her children with bitter pangs. Has it not been so? Every man’s labor and every woman’s travail prove that God is true. But then the Lord came in with a voice of mercy and He said, “The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head,” and Jesus came, the woman’s promised seed, and He has bruised the head of Satan and proclaimed to us salvation through the Man, the Mediator, who is also God over all, blessed forever. The first promise has been kept.

Years rolled on and God destroyed the world with a flood. You know the story. God said He would and He did it. He told Noah to go into the ark and He would save him. Noah went in and God saved him. But when he came out, perhaps Noah was half afraid the world would be destroyed again, and when a shower began to fall, he did not know but what the sluices of heaven had been pulled up again and that once more the floods might come. Presently he saw in the skies that wonderful sight, which I think none of us can look upon without delight—a rainbow, a bow of many colors, not a bloodstained bow, but a bow of joy, many-colored, like streamers of delight—a bow not turned downwards to shoot at us, but upwards, as if we might shoot our prayers up to God upon it—a bow without an arrow, to show that God has not come out to war with men. And what did God say? “I, behold, even I, do set My bow in the cloud, for behold I make a covenant with the world that seedtime and harvest, summer and winter, cold and heat, shall never fail. And I will no more destroy the earth with a flood.” Has He not kept it? Have you not felt winter’s cold going through your bones? Did you not sweat with the heat of summer? Did He not say that He would give you the harvest time and the heat? He has kept His covenant. Every time you see the rainbow in heaven, no, every time you walk upon the earth and find that it is not transformed into one dreary, dreadful, all-devouring sea, you may say to yourself, “God is true.”

The world went on and there came an Abraham into the world. And God said, “Get you hence, from your kindred, and from your father’s house, to a land that I will show you. I will give it to you and to your seed after you.” Abraham believed God and went into a land that he knew nothing of. He found it full of inhabitants and he dwelt among them in tents, wandering up and down. It did not look likely that God would give him that land, nor to his seed after him, for he had no children and he was more than a hundred years old, and his wife was well stricken in years. He had to wait a long time, but Isaac came at last and made glad that household. Four hundred and fifty years went on. Abraham had been gathered to his fathers and yet there was not an Israelite in all Canaan. Not a foot of that land belonged to them except the cave of Machpelah in which the dead patriarch still lay. But the time came for Israel to come up into the Promised Land and they did come. God sent down Moses and told Pharaoh to let His people go, for the time was come and they must go up to their own land. Pharaoh said, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey His voice? I will not obey His voice; neither will I let Israel go.” But he had to change his tune and bow before the stammering man who spoke for God. God chastened and plagued Egypt till at last they let Israel go—and they did go, though the Red Sea rolled before them—and Pharaoh’s host pursued them. They did go, and though the wilderness yielded them no meat, the heavens dropped with manna. They went through the great howling wilderness and failed not for drought, for the rocks gushed with rivers. They did go till they came to Canaan and there they were called to fight with Anakim and giants. And they threw down the battlements of their cities. And they smote the Canaanites with great slaughter, took possession of the land and dwelt therein—every man under his vine and under his fig tree—for the Lord had said it, and the Lord fulfilled it. He gave the land to them and they possessed it in due time.

Thus, you see, I might keep on with history as long as you pleased, but it all goes to show that if God says it, He does it. He said that Edom should become a desolation and the traveler can hardly pass through Petra at this present day. He said that Tyre should become a place for the mending of nets and it is still so in its desolateness. He said that Egypt should be the meanest of all the nations and who that knows Egypt, where the stick is used on almost every man, does not know that no people yield so meanly to a despot’s will as the Egyptian race? Everything has happened that the Lord has spoken up to this moment.

Now, instead of taking you back to ancient or modern history, I would like to take you to the history of your mother or of your grandmother. I think of my dear old grandfather and of what he used to say to me. If he were here tonight—I am glad he is not, because he is in heaven, and that is a much better place for him—but if he could come from heaven and could talk as he used to do when he was here on earth, he would say, “Ah, my boy, I did find Him a faithful God.” He had a large family and a very small income, but he loved his Lord and he would not have given up his preaching of the gospel for anything, not even for an imperial crown. He had told me often how the Lord provided for him. He had a little farm to get his living upon it and he had a cow which used to give milk for his many children. And one day when he came up to the cow, it fell back with the staggers and died. Grandmother said, “James, how will God provide for the dear children now? What shall we do for milk?” “Mother,” he said, “God said He would provide, and I believe that He could send us 50 cows if He pleased.” It so happened that on that day a number of gentlemen were meeting in London. Persons whom grandfather did not know were sitting as a committee for the distribution of money to poor ministers, and they had given it to all who had asked for it. My grandfather had never asked for any. He liked to earn his own money. He did not send in any petition or appeal. Well, after the gentlemen had distributed to all who had asked, there was five pounds over and they were considering what they should do with this balance. “Well,” said one, “there is a Mr. Spurgeon down at Stambourne, in Essex, a poor minister. He stands in need of five pounds.” “Oh,” said another, “don’t send him five pounds. I will add five to it. I know him. He is a worthy man.” “No,” said another, “don’t send him 10 pounds. I will give another five pounds if somebody else will put a fourth five to it.” The next morning came a letter to grandfather with nine pence postage due. Grandmother did not like to pay out nine pence for a letter, but there was 20 pounds in it, and as my grandfather opened it he said, “Now, can’t you trust God about an old cow?”

These things I tell you and you smile, and well you may, but oh my soul laughs, and my face laughs on both sides, when I think how faithful God has been to me. I can tell you about my grandfather, but I will not tell you about myself, for that would be almost as long as the history I spoke of. From the day that I left my father’s house to this day, if there is no other man in the world that can speak of the faithfulness of God, I can. I must, I will, and none shall stop me of this glorying. He has never lied unto me, or failed me, or forsaken me, but has kept His word to the moment in every respect. No, I sometimes think He has gone beyond His word and done for me exceedingly abundantly above what I understood Him to promise. He has exceeded my expectations even when my expectations have been at full tide.

If I were to invite the brothers round us, one by one, to get up and were to say “Brother, has God kept His word to you in the past? Speak as you have found Him,” they would all testify to the Lord’s truth. And, oh, it is not merely the brothers, but there are many aged women here—there are many widows here—there are many poor tried believers here, and as I look round I know the stories of some of you and I know what you would say. It would be, “Blessed be His holy name, and not one good thing has failed of all that the Lord God has promised.” There is the testimony of history, ancient and modern. There is the testimony of the biographies of our ancestors and the testimony of our autobiographies as well. God is true, glory be to His name!

Now, brethren, I was to have said next, that God is still true. Not only was He true, but He is true—He is true tonight. He is true tonight. If you want to know that, go down many of our streets in London tonight. Go to the casual ward of the workhouse if you like, and just pick out the vagrants—those that are in rags and poverty. What do you find? In nine cases out of 10, how did they get there? Drink and laziness. And what did God say? “The drunkard and the sluggard shall come to poverty.” God said they would and they do. He says, “The sluggard shall clothe himself with rags.” Every time I see a sluggard in rags, I say to myself, “God is true. He said it would come to that.” He tells us that sin will bring sorrow, and do you not see it everywhere? Most of the misery in the world can be traced to some sin or other—some direct breach of the divine commands. God is true.

On the other hand, look you tonight on many a happy face. If I were to question the man who owns that happy face—what makes you so happy?—he would say, “Because my sins are forgiven me.” “How came that about?” “I believed in the Lord Jesus Christ and I had the promise that my sins should be forgiven me, and they have been.” “You had a burden once, had you not?” “Yes.” “And you have got rid of it? Did you go to Jesus Christ’s cross with that burden?” “Yes, and I got rid of it just as He said I would.” “Did you do anything more than that?” “No, I simply trusted Jesus. He said I should have peace and I have it.”

“Well, but how about your daily troubles? Do you have any?” “Oh, yes. I do.” “I ask you that question because Jesus said, ‘In the world you shall have tribulation.‘ Do you find it so?” “That I do,” says one. But then He said, “In Me you shall have peace.” Do you find it so, brethren? How was it with you last week when you had all those troubles? Did you enjoy peace, even then? Did you hear Him say, “Let not your hearts be troubled; you believe in God: believe, also, in Me”? And did you believe in Him and find at once that you could cast your burden upon God?

Oh, yes, the saints will testify unanimously that whenever they trust God, it is well with their souls. And tonight, as well as in the past, we have a faithful God. Have we here present tonight any friend in great distress? You have forgotten it, I suppose, during the service, but now you remember that the brunt of the storm will be upon you next Monday. Does this alarm you? You are a child of God and do you think that your Father will leave you in the time of need? No, I will not ask you whether you think so, because it would be a crying shame if you did your Lord such an injustice. If we never doubt our God till we have a cause for it, it will be a long while first.

“But it is a new trouble, sir.” Yes, but He who was your God of old will help you through the new trial. Go to Him again. “Ah, but I dread the loss of a very dear and precious one.” Yes, but as His will is, so should your will be. God makes all things work together for good. Do you not believe it? All things are moving according to the decree of goodness and wisdom—and you must not doubt it. Like Jacob, you sometimes say, “All these things are against me,” but they are not, they are all for you. God is ordering all for the best.

Now, last of all, God will be true. I do not know how far we have to go before we shall reach our journey’s end, but this I do know, the whole of the road that we have to travel is paved with love and faithfulness, and we need not be afraid. We shall soon lie down upon our beds and fall asleep in death. I bless God for that. I said to a brother the other day, “So-and-so has gone home,” and the brother replied, “Well, where else should He go?” Where should a child go, when the day is over, but home? It is very sweet to think that the Lord’s own children shall all go home, by-and-by. He has promised that we shall be with Him where He is, and we shall find it so. Only, like the Queen of Sheba, we shall be astonished when we get there and we shall say, “The half has not been told us.” We shall leave these poor bodies behind in the grave for a while, but they will not be lost. They are old companions of ours on the journey of life and though the worms devour them, yet in our flesh we shall see God. the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible and body and soul, one perfect man, shall “behold the King in His beauty, and the land that is very far off.” God has said so and it will be so. We shall leave the church behind us, but God will take care of His church. We need not fret about that—He will not fail her nor forsake her. We shall leave the world behind us and the world is very wicked, but it will not prevail against the truth, for the Lord has said the gates of hell shall not prevail against His church, nor shall they. We need not be worrying about what will happen when Mr. So-and-so dies. People are always putting the question, “What will they do when their minister is gone?” Do? Trust in God as they did before. God is alive. Martin Luther once said to his friend, when he was fretting and worrying, “When will you leave off trying to govern the world?” And we may say the same to one another when we are anxious and fretful. God does not need any of us. We think ourselves mightily important but we really are no more important to God’s plans than the caterpillar in the kitchen garden is to a Napoleon when he is marching his armies across a continent. We are nothings and nobodies, except when God pleases to use us—and He can do better without us than with us many times, for we get in His way. Oh, brethren, matters are all right, for they are in God’s hands. The everlasting God lives and He will work His purposes, for He is the true God.

The heathen will be converted to Christ, for the Lord has said, “Ask of Me, and I will give you the heathen for your inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for your possession.” “As I live,” says the Lord, “surely all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” It shall be done. It must be done. Rest sure of it. “the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ.” Antichrist on yonder seven hills must be thrown down—the crescent of Mahomet must wane—the gods of the heathen must be utterly abolished. Must, I say, for is it not written, “He must reign till His enemies are made His footstool”?

I am no prophet, nor the son of a prophet and therefore I do not dare set up a theory of futurity, but this one thing I know—“The Lord reigns”—and the Lord will accomplish His purposes and preserve His church in the world. The truth shall never die and Christ’s throne shall never shake, for the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand.

Thus have we tried to declare the truthfulness of God. How short of the mighty theme have we fallen! These two words and we have done. Since God is true, you children of God, why do you mistrust Him? Since God is true, you sinners, why do you belie Him by your unbelief? Echo answers, “Why?” And so we leave it. And unto Father, Son and Holy Spirit be glory, forever and ever! Amen.

Charles Spurgeon