To Him that is able to keep us from falling.' Now the word that is rendered from falling' is even more emphatic, and carries a larger promise. For it literally means' without stumbling,' and stumbling is that which precedes falling. We are not only kept from falling, we are kept even from stumbling over the stumbling-stones that are in the way. The metaphor, perhaps, was suggested by the words of Isaiah, who, in one of his lovely images, describes God as leading Israel through the depths as a horse in the desert, that they stumble not.' Do you not see the picture? The nervous, susceptible animal, slipping and sliding over the smooth rock, in a sweat of terror, and the owner laying a kindly hand and a firm one on the bridle-rein, and speaking soothing words of encouragement, and leading it safely, that it stumble not. So God is able to lay hold of us when we are in perilous places, and when we cry, My foot slippeth,' His mercy will hold us up.
Is that rhetoric? Is that merely pulpit talk? Brethren, unless we lay firm hold of this faith, that God can and does touch and influence hearts that wait upon Him, so as by His Spirit and by His Word, which is the sword of the Spirit, to strengthen their feeble good, and to weaken their strong evil, to raise what is low, to illumine what is dark, and to support what is weak, we have not come to understand the whole wealth of possible good and blessedness which lies in the Gospel. This generation has forgotten far too much the place which the work of God's Holy Spirit on men's spirits fills in the whole proportioned scheme of New Testament revelation. It is because we believe that so little, in comparison with the clearness and strength of our faith in the work of Jesus Christ, the atoning sacrifice, that so many of us find it so foreign to our experience that any effluences from God come into our hearts, and that our spirits are conscious of being quickened and lifted by His Spirit! Ah! we might feel, far more than any of us do, His hand on the bridlerein We might feel, far more than any of us do, His strong upholding, keeping our feet from slipping as well as falling.' And if we believed and expected a Divine Spirit to enter into our spirits and to touch our hearts, the expectation would not be in vain.
I beseech you, believe that a solid experience and meaning lies in that word able to keep us from stumbling.' If we have that Divine Spirit moving in our spirits, moulding our desires, lifting our thoughts, confirming our wills, then the things that were stumbling-stones--that is to say, that appealed to our worst selves, and tempted us to evil--will cease to be so. The higher desires will kill the lower ones, as the sunshine is popularly supposed to put out household fires. If we have God's upholding help, the stumbling-stone will no more be a stumbling-stone, but a stepping-stone to something higher and better; or like one of those erections that we see outside old-fashioned houses of entertainment, where three or four steps are piled together, in order to enable a man the more easily to mount his horse and go on his way. For every temptation overcome brings strength to the overcomer.
Only let us remember Him that is able to keep.' Able! What is wanted that the ability may be brought into exercise; that the possibility of which I have spoken, of firm standing amongst those slippery places, shall become a reality? What is wanted? It is of no use to have a stay unless you lean on it. You may have an engine of ever so many horse-power in the engine-house, but unless the power is transmitted by shafts and belting, and brought to the machinery, not a spindle will revolve. He is able to keep us from stumbling, and if you trust Him, the ability will become actuality, and you will be kept from falling. If you do not trust Him, all the ability will lie in the engine-house, and the looms and the spindles will stand idle. So the reason why--and the only reason why--with such an abundant, and over-abundant, provision for never falling, Christian men do stumble and fall, is their own lack of faith.
Now remember that this text of mine follows on the heels of that former text which bade us build ourselves,' and keep ourselves in the love of God.' So you get the peculiarity of Christian ethics, and the blessedness of Christian effort, that it is not effort only, but effort rising from, and accompanied with, confidence in God's keeping hand. There is all the difference between toiling without trust and toiling because we do trust. And whilst, on the one hand, we have to exhort to earnest faith in the upholding hand of God, we have to say on the other, Let that faith lead you to obey the apostolic command, "Stand fast in the evil day . . taking unto you the whole armour of God."
