“Therefore, brethren, we were comforted over you in all our affliction and distress by your faith” (I. Thess. iii. 7).
(Continued from p. 171.)
II. The Solace.
“In all our afflictions and distress,” put upon us whatever weight you will, let it be in addition to what I have noticed, let it be reproach, distress, persecution, want, sorrow, poverty loss, trial, affliction, bereavement—put all these together, yet there is something to solace us, and “in all our affliction and distress we are comforted.” And by what? Why, “by your faith.” “Why,” say you, “what have you to do with our faith?” You will recollect those words: “The communication of thy faith”—in spiritual fellowship one with another, God Almighty help you to carry this out.
But in addition to this, the sent servants of God get comfort or solace in the midst of their afflictions, from knowing that there is faith wrought in the heart of this man or of that woman, and that this or that sermon is owned of God to the working of faith in the soul. I mean saving faith; I mean living faith; I mean supernatural faith; I would not give a straw, I would not take the trouble to stand up to preach a sermon, merely for the purpose of bringing you to credit what I say—merely for the purpose of bringing you to subscribe to what I subscribe to; merely to bring you to credit the facts and statements of the Word of God, which I acknowledge. The devil does not deny it; infidels may, many of them, be brought to confess it, though they will not receive it. This is merely the natural man; this is merely changing the colour of old Adam; this is merely cultivating human intellect. There is nothing of spiritual life in this. The faith I want, is that which is wrought in the heart by the Holy Spirit, through the preached word. Mark that text: ‘Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.’ Many people say, “Faith comes by hearing, and by dint of study;” but the faith of God’s people comes by hearing the gospel preached; it is put into their hearts in that way. Many people’s faith is that which they have schooled themselves into very nicely by argument and process of natural reasoning, but it has no more to do with religion, than it has to do with creating a world; it has no more to do with religion, than it has to do with creating a soul anew. The faith I want is a faith wrought in the heart by a supernatural power; the grace of the Holy Spirit descending from above and taking possession of a soul for Jesus Christ, to assert His authority and His sovereignty there. Now this is our solace as ministers; when this faith is wrought through our preaching of the everlasting gospel. I mean, when hearers do not merely go away, and say, “Oh! that was a fine sermon; we liked that sermon very much, we liked the text and we liked the style and we liked the manner.” What have your likes and dislikes to do with it? You may like it all very much, and go away without the least benefit. I pray you see, not whether you like the sermon, but whether it is fastened upon your conscience; whether the Holy Ghost has made use of it to work faith—for “faith cometh by hearing;” whether it has accomplished a spiritual transformation in you; and whether it has given a capacity, a principle, which lays hold on Christ and on eternal life in Him. It is when we are called to witness this, and we recognise the work of God thus going on, that we are “comforted in all our affliction and distress.”
I will give you an instance now how we are sometimes comforted by this. I am looking back now only a few days. I have found my mind extremely harassed and distressed, by some of the most vexatious letters that perhaps could be penned on purpose to insult a man, and then again by some of the most trying visitors, that would weary the patience of Job to talk with them; and I have sat down and sighed: “Oh! who would be a minister?” That was just the feeling of my mind, fretting under the accumulation of troubles. Then comes a letter: what is it? some new plague to torment me? No! but to tell of some poor sinner brought under the preached Word here out of captivity into glorious liberty, out of darkness into light, rejoicing in the salvation of Christ Jesus; and two or three similar cases on the back of it. And then, instead of crying out, “Oh! who would be a minister?” we cry, “Oh! who would not?” I name this, as an illustration how we are comforted: we are comforted when we witness that the work of God goes on through the instrumentality of a preached Word, and that we do not “labour in vain, nor spend our strength for nought.”
Yet further: we are “comforted by your faith,” when we witness that it has drawn you from the world, and made you what believers should be. We are comforted, when we witness the charity and love which always accompany saving faith; when we witness the purity that it always effects, for you will recollect it is written, that God “put no difference between Jews and Gentiles, purifying their hearts by faith.” Mark that genuine property—purifying. I do not mind what they call their faith, whether they call it a human faith, a carnal-reason faith, or an accrediting faith, if it does not purify the heart, it is not worth having; if it does not make its possessor love holiness it will never give him a place in heaven; if it does not make its possessor hate sin, it is not the faith of God’s elect; if it does not “work by love,” it is a lazy faith, and good for nothing; if it does not “purify the heart,” God will never take that heart as His habitation. You cannot prove that the Holy Ghost has made your heart His temple unless mighty grace—saving faith—has purified it; for when He comes into a temple, He always casts out idols, and buyers and sellers too; He comes there to purify it, and make it fit for God. Now, when we witness, as the Apostle did in these Thessalonians, that the faith of God has purified the hearts of our people, that they love purity, spirituality, and holiness, that they are in love with Christ, and hate everything contrary to His mind and will; that they are exemplary characters, separated from the world; that they have really been with Jesus, and imbibed His Spirit, then, as the Apostle was when he saw this, “we are comforted.”
Again: when the Apostle says, “We are comforted by your faith,” I cannot but believe that he had this in view: the growth of their faith: “Because your faith groweth.” A growing faith must be a living faith. A growing faith: a grain of mustard seed that is cast into the earth, and groweth until it becomes a tree, large enough for the fowls of the air to lodge in the branches of it,—for that is our Lord’s history of it. But do mark here, I beseech you, that even when it is as small as a grain of mustard seed, it is sufficient to overturn a mountain: “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place, and it shall remove.” This is His simile; and fairly carried out, you see the child of God taking a grain of mustard seed, and rolling it against a mountain, and it casts the mountain down. It may be a mountain of unbelief, a mountain of sin, a mountain of difficulty; a grain of mustard seed overturns it all. Then, what a very little portion of faith you and I must have, to let the mountain stand! to be standing kicking at mountains, both in providence and in grace, instead of rolling the grain of mustard seed at them! “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed,” said our Lord (and He never spoke anything but the truth), “ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence, and it shall remove.”
But now, what shall we say of its growth? I find some recorded in the Word of God, so strong in faith, that whenever they came to a promise, they seized upon it and called it their own. I find some of them so strong in faith, as to know there was a crown of righteousness laid up for them whenever they had done with the wilderness. I find some so strong in faith, as to come even “boldly” to the throne of grace in its exercise. I find some so strong in faith, as even to “stir up themselves to take hold of God.” I find some so strong in faith that when have got hold, they will not let Him go: “I will not let Thee go, except Thou bless me.” And I find old Abraham so strong in faith, as to take God at His word in the face of seeming impossibilities; for “he went out, not knowing whither he went.” A poor worldling’s faith, you know, is only founded upon his knowledge; but the faith of Abraham was where knowledge did not exist: “He went out, not knowing whither he went.” And did he know the result when he went to offer up his son Isaac? Nobody told him there would be a ram in the thicket; nobody told him that God would stay his hand, when it was uplifted with the knife to slay his son Isaac. Yet without any knowledge, or anything like it, merely at God’s bare word, merely at the command of the Most High, he goes, and God appears at the proper time. It is faith’s province to trust God; it is God’s business to deliver. It is faith’s business to walk in the dark; it is God’s business to guide it. It is faith’s business to wage war with ten thousand foes, quite apart from the question how they are to be conquered; that is God’s business. It is faith’s business to take God at His word; it is God’s business to honour faith.
Now, the Apostle witnessed in these Thessalonians that their faith “grew”—”grew exceedingly.” Oh! do let me look at your experience; do let me know how you are getting on in this very thing; whether your faith is growing, “growing exceedingly;” whether it has got at all beyond its infancy, its boyhood; whether it has reached the “young man” or “the father”; whether it is “the blade” or “the ear,” or “the full corn in the ear.” These are our Lord’s similes.
But another thought here: a growing faith must be a living faith, and not a dead one. It must be one which has the life of God in it, and can never die. And this will lead on, by growth, to the full assurance of it. I do not like to find young Christians professing to be in possession of assurance in a very early experience, but I do like them to grow. I never knew a man to stand well that jumped into assurance; but I have known many stand well who have grown into it, and grown, too, with much discipline. There is a great deal to be done. The plants in our gardens must be watered, and we must “dig about them and dung them”; and depend upon it, if God means to make faith strong, He will water it, and prune it, and lop it, and then refresh it by “the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ.”
There is one thing more: the Apostle’s comfort was extended and increased by the stability of their faith, which evinced its reality. There was such tenacity, and firmness, and abiding steadfastness in these disciples at Thessalonica, that they were “not moved with afflictions.” And I am very anxious that this should be the case with my hearers. There are so many moonshine pretensions in the present day which have no foundation whatever in the Word of God, but profess to spring from what they call an enlightened age. But verily this “enlightened age” is in the path towards darkness again; we are going down into the darkness of Popery at a most tremendous rate. And yet they call this an enlightened age; and there are some that are foolish enough to tell us: “Oh! people are too well educated now to be guilty of the persecutions of the barbarous age; they belong to times bygone.” But, pray, who were the persecutors in times bygone? Were they not the well educated? Were they not the learned? Were they not men like those at Oxford? Nay, were they not the very men who heaped to themselves and monopolised all the learning of the day, that it should not become common? These were the very parties; and they will be the men again. This argument falls to the ground in a moment. But none of us are to be moved with these persecutions. If the law is to prevent our meeting together as now, if it is to prohibit our reading the Bible, if it is to silence the men who preach what I preach—the doctrines of God’s eternal grace—you are not to be moved by these afflictions, and so to evidence your faith by its firmness. Let us see that you can stand in trying times and in the face of the bitterest foes; that the faith of God’s elect is like God Himself, and standeth sure and firm and immovable, “having this seal, the Lord knoweth them that are His.”
Much occurs to my mind here, but I must indulge only in a concluding thought: the apostle’s comfort strengthened brotherly affection, and therefore in the language of my text he opens with: “Therefore, brethren.” When he first sent Timotheus to Thessalonica to make inquiries about the matter of their faith, I query much if he had not some suspicions whether he should be able to call them “brethren,” whether they had not forfeited their claim to that blessed appellation, and whether they had not gone back from the faith to the world and become apostates. But when Timotheus came, and brings good tidings of their faith, he says, “Brethren.” There is a strengthening and a refining of the relative affection which existed, so that he recognises them and knows them, as part of the same family, standing fast in the same faith, and looking to the same glorious end and goal. “Therefore, brethren, we were comforted in all our affliction and distress by your faith.”
But I beseech you, brethren, be upon your guard against the abuse of this appellation; while you do not abandon its use, because it is abused. There are whimsical visionaries enough, with about as much religion as horses and dogs at heart, who are priding themselves upon the term and arrogating to themselves the term, brethren; and I believe they are infidels in heart. Do not be beguiled by them. But on the other hand, do not abandon the faith of God’s elect. Love as brethren, live as brethren, walk as brethren, claim alliance and joint privileges as brethren. Let it be seen and known, that your relationship to each other, as real Christians, is of God; that Jesus is the Elder Brother, and that those who possess the spirit and mind of Jesus are all related to each other as a holy brotherhood. Then we shall say concerning you, as Paul did, “We are comforted in all our affliction and distress by your faith.”
May the eternal God make your faith to “grow exceedingly,” and keep it in lively exercise. And His Name shall have all the glory.
A proud heart and a lofty mountain are never fruitful.
—Gurnall.