If You Are Not Offended By Him

But what blessedness awaits you if you are not offended in Jesus. You are blessed while you are waiting for him, but your best reward is to come, In that hereafter, when the morning breaks on the everlasting shore, how will they be ashamed and disgusted with themselves who sought their own honor and esteem, and denied their Lord and Master! Where will Demas be then, who chose the present world and forsook his Lord? Where will that son of perdition be who chose the thirty pieces of silver and sold the Prince of Life? What shame will seize upon the coward, the fearful, the unbelieving, the people who checked conscience and stifled conviction because a fool’s laugh was too much for them! Then they will have to bear the Savior’s scorn and the everlasting contempt of all holy beings.

But the men who stood meekly forward to confess their Lord, who were willing to be set in the pillory of scorn for Christ, ready to be spit upon for him, ready to be called ill names for his sake, ready to lose their character, their substance, their liberty, and their lives for him - oh how calmly will they await the great assize*, when loyalty shall receive honor from the great King. How bright will be their faces when he that sitteth on the throne will say, “They confessed me before men, and now will I confess them before my Father which is in heaven. These are mine, my Father,” says he “they are mine. They clave unto me, and now I own them as my jewels.”

These are they that followed the Lamb whithersoever he went. They read the word, and what they found there they believed. They saw their Lord’s will in the Scriptures, and they labored to do it. They were faithful to conscience and to conviction, and the Spirit dwelt in them and guided their lives; they shall be the Redeemer’s crown and the beloved of his Father. They were the poor of this world; they were considered to be mere idiots by some, and were thought to have gone mad by others; but they are the Lord’s own elect.

Jesus will say, “They were with me in my tribulation; they were with me in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, and now they are mine, and they shall be with me on my throne. Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from before the foundations of the world.”

* - the sitting of a court

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Offended With Christ." Image by Patrick on Flickr under Creative Commons License, without alteration.