The security of the Church

“As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about his people from henceforth even for ever.” Psalm 125:2

Suggested Further Reading: Jude 17-25

As the Church always has been preserved, the text assures us she always will be, henceforth even for ever. There is a nervous old woman here. Last Saturday night she read the newspaper, and she saw something about five or six clergymen going over to Rome: she laid down her spectacles, and she began crying, “Oh! The Church is in danger, the Church is in danger.” Ah! Put your spectacles on; that is all right; never mind about the loss of those fellows. Better gone; we did not want them; do not cry if fifty more follow them; do not be at all alarmed. Some church may be in danger, but God’s church is not. That is safe enough; that shall stand secure, even to the end. I remember with what alarm some of my friends received the tidings of the geological discoveries of modern times, which did not quite agree with their interpretation of the Mosaic history of the creation. They thought it an awful thing that science should discover something which seemed to contradict the Scriptures. Well, we lived over the geological difficulty, after all. And since then there have been different sets of philosophic infidels, who have risen up and made wonderful discoveries; and poor timid Christians have thought, “What a terrible thing! This surely will be the end of all true religion; when science can bring facts against us, how shall we be able to stand?” They just waited about another week, and suddenly found that science was not their enemy, but their friend, for the Truth, though tried in a furnace, like silver seven times, is ever a gainer by the trial. To those that hate the church, she shall ever be a thorn in your side! Oh! you that would batter her walls to pieces, know this, that she is impregnable.

For meditation: The enemies of the church build on an unsteady foundation of deliberately ignoring facts (2 Peter 3:5). The church is built on the immovable rock Christ Jesus (Matthew 16:18) and she shall not be moved (Psalm 46:5).

Sermon no. 161
1 November (1857)