2 in hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began.” (Titus 1:2 (ESV)
The following sermon was delivered on Sunday morning May 8, 1864 by the Rev. C. H. Spurgeon at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington. The sermon text is Titus 1:2. The sermon title is What God Cannot Do.
III. But I shall now come to make a practical use of the text, in the third place, by observing HOW WE OUGHT TO ACT TOWARDS GOD IF IT BE TRUE THAT HE IS A “GOD THAT CANNOT LIE.”
Brethren, if it be so that God cannot lie, then it must be the natural duty of all His creatures to believe Him. I cannot resist that conclusion. It seems to me to be as clear as noonday that it is every man’s duty to believe the truth, and that if God must speak and act truth, and truth only, it is the duty of all intelligent creatures to believe Him. Here is “Duty-faith” again, which some are railing at, but how they can get away from it, and yet believe that God cannot lie, I cannot understand.
If God has set forth the Lord Jesus Christ as the propitiation for sin, and has told me to trust Christ, it is my duty to trust Christ, because God cannot lie. And though my sinful heart will never believe in Christ as a matter of duty but only through the work of the Holy Spirit, yet faith does not cease to be a duty. And whenever I am unbelieving and have doubts concerning God, however moral my outward life may be, I am living in daily sin. I am perpetrating a sin against the first principles of morality.
If I doubt God, as far as I am able, I rob Him of His honor, and stab Him in the vital point of His glory. I am, in fact, living an open traitor and a sworn rebel against God, upon whom I heap the daily insult of daring to doubt Him.
Many believers cannot be comfortable without signs and evidences. When they feel in a good frame of mind—ah! then God’s promise is true, when they can pray heartily, when they can feel the love of God shed abroad in their hearts, then they say, “How God has kept His promise.”
Ah! but my brother, that is a seeing-faith. “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” Faith is to believe in God when my heart is as hard as the nether millstone, when my frames are bad, when I cannot pray, when I cannot sing, when I can do nothing good. To say, “He has promised.
Come now, will you kick against the promise because of its greatness? Do not so, but let your doubts and fears be hushed to sleep, and now with the promise of God as your pillow, and God’s faithfulness as your support, lie down in peace, and behold in faith’s open vision the ladder the top whereof leads to heaven. Trust the promise of God in Christ, and depend upon it that He will be as good to you, even to you, as His own Word, and in heaven you shall have to sing of the “God, that cannot lie.”
I would that these weak words of mine, for I am very conscious of their feebleness this morning, may nevertheless have comfort in them for any who have been doubting and fearing, that they may trust my Lord. And sure, I am that if they begin a life of faith, they will begin a life of happiness and of security. “The just shall live by faith,” and well may they do so, when they have to trust in a “God, that cannot lie.”
May the Lord’s truth and grace be found here.
Soli deo Gloria!
His Word Today 