“Ye believe in God, believe also in me.”
John 14:1
To believe in God is to believe in him as he has manifested himself in his dear Son in all the fulness of his love, in all the riches of his grace, and in all the depth of his mercy. God must be seen, not in the terrors of a holy law, but in the mercy and truth of the glorious gospel of the Son of God, and thus be approached and believed in as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our Father in him. How few see and realise this, and yet how sorely exercised are many of the living family upon this point! To believe in God in such a way as to bring pardon and peace into their conscience; to believe in God so as to find manifest acceptance with him; to believe in God so as to call him Abba, Father, and feel that the Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are his children; to believe in God so as to find him a very present help in trouble; to receive answers to prayer, to walk in the light of his countenance, to have his love shed abroad in the heart, to be manifestly reconciled to him, and feel a sense of his manifested goodness and mercy— this is to believe in God through Jesus Christ.
And O how different is this from merely believing about God from what we see in nature that he is the Creator of all things, or from what we may have realised of his footsteps in providence that he watches over us as regards the things that perish, or from seeing in the letter of the word that he is the God of all grace to those who fear his name!
Paul did not mean to say that he had no religion, but none in himself. ‘What! could not Paul stand against temptation?’ Not more than you or I, unassisted by the grace of God. ‘Could not Paul pray more than I can?’ No, not at all, except so far as the spirit of grace and supplications was given to him. ‘Could not Paul love more than I do?’ Not a bit more, nor think a spiritual thought more, as far as self was concerned. I do not mean to say that Paul did not pray, believe, and love more than any of us do; but he did not perform these actions in himself one whit more than we can. He says, expressly, “In me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing;” and therefore not the good thing of faith, or love, or divine communion.
Now when the Lord has brought a soul down to be nothing, he then makes his strength perfect in that nothingness; he communicates strength to pray, strength to believe, strength to hope, to love, to receive the gospel. Just like the poor man with the withered hand, to whom Jesus said, “Stretch forth thine hand.” It was withered, he could not do it of himself. But Christ’s strength was made perfect in weakness: when he spake the word, the withered hand was stretched forth, and became whole as the other. So with the dead Lazarus—he was asleep in death; but when the voice of love and power penetrated into the tomb, “Lazarus, come forth,” life was made perfect in the dead corpse. So with the Old Testament worthies, who “out of weakness were made strong” (Heb. 11:34). And so, each in our measure, it is with us; our weakness, helplessness, and inability are the very things which
draw forth the power, the strength, and the grace of Jesus.
Pastors Peter Simpson and John Sherwood staged a witness and time of public preaching time outside of the House of Commons in Westminster on Wednesday March 12th, with a particular emphasis on the grave concern felt by Bible-believing Christians at the establishment by the Government of an ‘Islamophobia Council’ to look into the whole issue of redefining ‘Islamophobia’. Their task is to deal with the increasing problem, as the Government sees it, of anti-Muslim prejudice in the UK. The preachers had with them special posters and a specially prepared leaflet on the subject produced by the Christian Watch organisation, and which was written by Pastor Simpson.
Far from their being anti-Muslim prejudice under which Muslims are labouring, Islam seems to be ever increasing in numbers and influence in the UK, and if there is in a few quarters serious criticism of Islam, this in no way implies any hatred for Muslim people or prejudice against them personally. There is, however, genuine concern in the country about Islam’s inability, because of its very nature, to integrate into British culture and into the country’s Christianity-based civilisation. It needs to be remembered that Islam is an all-pervasive political and social system, as well as a religion, and the goal of any faithful Muslim adhering to its core teachings nothing less than the Islamisation of the whole earth.
The preaching by the pastors outside of Parliament was of course in the context of the Christian loving his neighbour. Such love, however, does not negate the duty of any true Christian to point out the dangers of all religious falsehood and error which are contrary to the Biblical revelation. Christian love does not demand weakness and the abandonment of primary Christian teaching in order to promote what is called multicultural community cohesion.
The posters on display read as follows : 1) ‘Islamophobia legislation is a threat to free speech, especially of Christians. It represents a pro-Islamic blasphemy law’; 2) Christians love their Muslim neighbour, but must be free to criticise Islam on Biblical grounds”; 3) ‘Christians are persecuted in Islamic lands. It is not hatred to highlight this and condemn it’; 4) The Lord Jesus Christ says that He is the only way. That means that other religions are false. Christians must have the freedom, in love, to say so’. It was encouraging to see members of the public walking by carefully reading them.
Islam refutes uncompromisingly the very heart of the Christian message, namely the deity of Christ as the eternal Son of God appearing on earth as a man, and His sacrificial death upon the Cross as the only means of atonement between God and the sinner. In short, Islam and Christianity are completely irreconcilable. As far as Christians are concerned, to deny Christ’s deity and Sonship is to deny God the Father also. So we are not in the realm of two mildly different approaches to worshipping the same God. Any faith system which denies the deity of Christ, and His unique mediatorial role, is not worshipping the God whom Christians worship.
This is why the preaching outside of Parliament strongly criticised the recent holding of an Islamic Iftar event in St. George’s Hall, Windsor Castle on March 2nd. This event included Islamic prayer, and that is the crunch issue; it was in effect an act of Islamic worship endorsed, obviously because of the venue, by the Supreme Governor of the national Church. We must take this on board. This was an act of worship not directed to the one true Trinitarian God (Muslims openly deny the Trinity).
The chief executive of the Ramadan Tent Project who organised the Windsor Castle event praised King Charles for his commitment to ‘community cohesion’. One might courteously ask, however, how many mosques, either in the UK or anywhere else in the world, would be willing to host Christian pastors offering up prayers to the Lord Jesus Christ as being the final prophet to bring God’s revelation to mankind, the fully divine Son of God, and the only way for sinful men to reach heaven?
The leaflet which was handed out in Westminster pointed out that all around the Islamic world Christians are being severely persecuted for their faith. Of the top 12 persecuting countries in the Open Doors World Watch List for 2025, in no less than 10 of these the persecution is at the hands of Islam . Therefore, Christians must have the freedom to criticise and condemn Islamic teaching and practice. We must be free to assert that Jesus Christ is the only way. Also, the Government must have a proper regard for Britain’s distinctively Bible-based Christian identity, which is integral to the very constitution of our nation.
After the witness at Westminster Pastors Sherwood and Simpson moved on to Marble Arch and preached the precious gospel of salvation there for a while. May the Lord be pleased to use these proclamations of Biblical truth in the capital city to His own glory.
“Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it:
it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble;
but he shall be saved out of it.”
Jeremiah 30:7
This “day of trouble” is when sin is laid as a heavy burden upon a man’s conscience; when guilt presses him down into the dust of death, when his iniquities stare him in the face, and seem more in number than the hairs of his head; when he fears he shall be cast for ever into the bottomless pit of hell, and have his portion with the hypocrites.
This “day of trouble” is not literally a day, a portion of time meted out by the rising or setting sun, a space of twenty-four hours. The hands of a clock, or the shadow of a dial, cannot regulate spiritual troubles. A day here means a season, be it long or short; be it a day, week, month, or year. And as the season cannot be measured in length, so the trouble cannot be measured in depth.
The only wise God deals out various measures of affliction to his people. All do not sink to the same depth, as all do not rise to the same height. All do not drink equally deep of the cup; yet all, each in their measure, pass through this day of trouble, wherein their fleshly religion is pulled to pieces, their self-righteousness marred, their presumptuous hopes crushed, and they brought into the state of the leper, to cry, “Unclean, unclean.” Until a man has passed through this day of trouble, until he has experienced more or less of these exercises of soul, and known guilt and condemnation in his conscience; until he has struggled in this narrow pass, and had his rags of creature righteousness torn away from him, he can know nothing experimentally of the efficacy of Jesus’ atoning blood, nor feel the power of Christ’s resurrection.
“I lead in the way of righteousness.”
Proverbs 8:20
How does the Lord Jesus—who speaks here under the name of Wisdom— lead his saints “in the way of righteousness?” By casting a mysterious light into their souls, whereby they see what the word of God has revealed, and shedding abroad a mysterious power in their hearts, whereby faith is created, to receive, lay hold of, and credit that which God has made known.
We may read the word of God for ever in vain, unless that word is made life and light to our souls; but when the Lord the Spirit, whose covenant office and work it is to take of the things of Jesus and reveal them to the heart, sheds a mysterious and blessed light upon those Scriptures which speak of Jesus as the law-fulfiller, as having brought in a glorious righteousness, and at the same moment is pleased to raise up faith and power in the heart to receive, credit, embrace, and handle what he has thus revealed, then by his own persuasive power he leads the soul “in the way of righteousness.” And O what a wonderful way it is! that God should ever find out such a way, as to make all his people righteous, by imputing to them another’s righteousness! It will be the wonder, the song of saints through all eternity; it will exhaust all the depths of their finite wisdom to look into these secrets of wisdom, love, and power.
Yea, the angels themselves, who so far exceed men in wisdom, are represented as “desiring to look into” these things, and therefore when the ark was made, and the mercy seat put over the tables which were inclosed therein, the seraphim were framed as looking down upon this golden mercy seat, representing how the height, breadth, length, and depth of these mysteries overpass even the faculties of the angels themselves.
“Then I said, I am cast out of thy sight;
yet I will look again toward thy holy temple.”
Jonah 2:4
When poor Jonah spake these words he uttered them in the very bitterness of his heart; he felt that he was cast out of God’s gracious presence. But he must have known something experimentally of the sweetness of God’s manifested presence; he must have tasted that heaven was in it, and that all his happiness centered there. He must have enjoyed this in order to know if God’s presence were not felt in the soul, there was but one barren scene of gloom and death; and that to be “cast out of his sight” was the commencement of hell upon earth.
Now here a living soul differs from all others, whether dead in sin, or dead in a profession. The persuasion that in God alone is true happiness; the feeling of misery and dissatisfaction with everything else but the Lord, and everything short of his manifested presence, is that which stamps the reality of the life of God in a man’s soul. Mere professors of religion feel no misery, dissatisfaction, or wretchedness, if God shine not upon them. So long as the world smiles, and they have all that heart can wish, so long as they are buoyed up by the hypocrite’s hope, and lulled asleep by the soft breezes of flattery, they are well satisfied to sail down the stream of a dead profession.
But it is not so with the living soul; he is at times panting after the smiles of God; he is thirsting after his manifested presence; he feels dissatisfied with the world, and all that it presents, if he cannot find the Lord, and does not enjoy the light of his countenance. Where this is experienced, it stamps a man as having the grace of God in his heart.
“Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world,
but was manifest in these last times for you.”
1 Peter 1:20
By “these last times” is meant this present dispensation, the dispensation of grace under which we live, and they are called the last times chiefly for two reasons:
1. Because Christ was manifested in the last days of the legal dispensation of the old covenant, which now, as decaying and waxing old, was ready to vanish away (Heb. 8:13), which it did when at the destruction of Jerusalem the whole of the temple service, including the sacrifices offered there, was brought to an end. But
2. Another reason why the dispensation under which we live is called “the last days” is because it is the final revelation of God. It is “the time accepted,” “the day of salvation,” of which all the prophets have spoken (2 Cor. 6:2; Acts 3:24).
Christ is now upon his throne of grace; the great, the glorious, the only Mediator between God and men is now at the right hand of the Father; the Intercessor who is able to save to the uttermost all that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them, still lives to plead, as an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, as the great High Priest over the house of God. But he will leave the throne of grace to take his seat on the throne of judgment; and then “these last days” will close in all the glories of salvation to his friends, in all the horrors of destruction to his foes.
“Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it.”
Psalm 81:10
When the Lord favours your soul with sweet access at a throne of grace, make the most of it. What should we think of the master of a vessel coming up the river, if, when the wind was favourable and the tide served, he would not heave her anchor, or hoisted but her fore-sail to the breeze, and would not take full advantage of wind and tide? Now it is so sometimes with our souls; a gale blows, a gale of grace on the soul, and the tide of faith rises. Is it not our wisdom, and is it not our mercy, at such a rare season, to make the most of it? If the Lord deign to give us an ear, is it not our mercy to tell him all that our souls desire?
Do you recollect what the prophet said to the king who only struck his arrows three times on the ground, and then stayed? “The man of God was wroth with him, and said, Thou shouldest have smitten five or six times; then hadst thou smitten Syria till thou hadst consumed it; whereas now thou shalt smite Syria but thrice” (2 Kings 13:19). Sometimes it is so with us. When the Lord gives us some little access unto himself, we do not make the most of it. Satan casts in some fiery dart, some worldly circumstance distracts our mind, some filthy imagination rises up in our bosom; and instead of resisting the devil that he may flee from us, we give way to him; the opportunity is gone, the sweet moment is lost, and it may be months before we get the ear of the King again. It will, therefore, be your wisdom and your mercy, when the gale blows, and the tide rises, to spread every sail, and to get as far as you can on your course to the haven of eternal rest and joy.
“That I may glory with thine inheritance.”
Psalm 106:5
The Church is Christ’s inheritance. He purchased it by his own blood. He went into captivity for it, and he redeemed it by pouring out his precious blood for it. Now this inheritance glories: “That I may glory with thine inheritance.” And in whom does it glory? It glories in its covenant Head. It does not glory in itself—in its pious self, righteous self, strong self, religious self; “let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches, but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me.” “He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.” The glory of the Church is to glory in her covenant Head—to glory in Christ and in Christ alone; to glory in his strength, love, blood, grace, and righteousness; and to glory in it, herself being covered with shame.
None can glory in Christ, until he is stripped of his own glory. There is no putting the crown of glory on the head of self and on the head of the Mediator. There is no saying, “I have procured this by my own strength,” and putting the crown upon that head. There is no saying, “I obtained this by my own exertions,” and putting the crown upon those exertions. No; a man to glory in Christ must be covered with shame and confusion. He must be abased in his feelings; he must have his mouth in the dust; he must loathe himself in dust and ashes before God; he must see and feel himself to be the chief of sinners, and “less than the least of all saints;” he must know and feel himself to be a wretch indeed.
And then when he lies in the dust of abasement, if a sight of the dear Redeemer’s glory catches his eye and inflames his heart, he glories in him, and in him alone. And all the “inheritance” of God glory in him; they can glory in nothing else, and their highest attainment is to place all the glory of salvation from first to last simply upon his head, to whom that glory belongs.
“That I may rejoice in the gladness of thy nation.”
Psalm 106:5
What is “the gladness of God’s nation?” To be saved “without money and without price;” to be saved by grace—free, rich, sovereign, distinguishing grace, without one atom of works, without one grain of creature merit, without anything of the flesh. This is “the gladness of God’s nation;” to rejoice in free grace, grace superabounding over the aboundings of sin, grace reigning triumphant over the dreadful evils of our heart. It is grace that “gladdens” a man’s heart. Oh! sweet grace, blessed grace! when it meets our case and reaches our souls. Oh! what a help, what a strength, what a rest for a poor toiling, striving, labouring soul, to find that grace has done all the work, to feel that grace has triumphed in the cross of Christ, to find that nothing is required, nothing is wanted, nothing is to be done. It is a full and perfect, complete and finished work. Oh! sweet sound, when it reaches the heart and touches the conscience, and is shed blessedly abroad in the soul.
This is “the gladness of God’s nation;” this makes their heart glad, that the work is finished, that the warfare is accomplished, that the Church of God “hath received of the Lord’s hand double for all her sins;” this is the comforting sound wherewith God “comforts his people;” this makes the nation glad, and their heart to leap and dance for joy. Has your heart never leaped at the sound?—only for a moment? Has grace never sounded sweetly in your soul, and made your very heart dance within you? If it has, you know what is “the gladness of God’s nation.”
