IT must take a mighty power to “turn the world upside down,” and yet that very power is exerted by the gospel!
The gentlest thing in the universe contains the greatest moral power. What could be more gentle, more tender, more affecting than the story which tells of God’s love to man and of the gift of His Son to die for them? and yet it is just this divine and lovely story, set forth by the Holy Spirit, that appears to accomplish the above result.
True, it may be despised and derided and rejected, but it flows peacefully onward, like a gladdening stream, or as the breeze that bloweth where it listeth, so, in a thousand ways, this heavenly message pursues its life-giving course over the face of the globe. God takes care of it; Satan opposes it; men criticize it, and ofttimes thrust it aside; but the Spirit of truth places His seal on its glorious testimony, and brings it home, in quickening and saving power, to the souls of poor needy sinners.
Hence, it carries its own credentials, and commends its own intrinsic worth.
By the presentation of truth it condemns falsehood; it overcomes evil by goodness; it dissipates error by facts, and darkness by light; it unfolds love in such a way that malice, and hate, and passion of every kind are overturned. Such is the kind of moral revolution which the gospel has brought about. It has thus turned the world upside down, has set it in tumult, and keeps it in that condition. It will not allow men to sleep in their sins. Its call is constant, and its influence is elevating and moralizing. It may use feeble instruments. It employs worms to thrash mountains, and “things that are not, to bring to naught things that are”; but the work is done, and done effectually in those who believe!
Thus Paul and Silas came to Thessalonica, preached on three Sabbath days the simple fact of a dead and risen Saviour, who was Jesus the Christ; and this, strange to say, caused such a commotion as set fill the city on an uproar, and led them to be accused of turning the world (not only Thessalonica) upside down! This was surely a serious matter. The world must be more easily turned upside down than its inhabitants suppose. It is the gospel that does it! Passing strange! the fact is “the world” is rotten at the core; its foundations are on deceit, and sin, and alienation from God. The fabric is hollow. A breath of truth is enough to shake it and make it totter. Two simple men, acting in the power of God and only speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ, are able to make the bubble burst, and produce general consternation. “Men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil.” Ah! that is the entire secret!
It is a very useful thing to see what this wonderful and idolized world really is. A “man of the world” is regarded as a very fine fellow. He has his gun and dogs; his horses and hounds; his place and pleasures, things in themselves, possibly harmless, but they are his all, his idols, his god; nor do they satisfy him! His poor empty heart needs something infinitely beyond a dog or a horse to meet its craving. It needs, not the world, but God!
Now it is just the heart of man that the gospel claims. It asks not for the world, nor its revolution nor reformation. It makes its direct assault on the individual heart and conscience. It seeks to turn them upside down! Blessed work! The heart of the sinner is wrong side up. It is wrong every way, toward God and self, toward truth and holiness, toward light and salvation; and the discovery of this, by the in-shining of the gospel, is the first part of the grand capsize which leads to the settlement of the soul in the knowledge of God through faith in the work of the Lord Jesus.
Well, the millennium has not yet come, nor shall it come by the preaching of the gospel; but the hearts of men, in countless multitudes, are being overturned and blessed by faith in the message. This will go on until the Master rise up and shut to the door. Then no more gospel.
My reader, have you been convicted, converted, and saved by the gospel?
“The gospel is of God
To magnify His Son,
For Jesus Christ, our Lord,
By power God’s will hath done:
By power He crushed the serpent’s head,
By power God raised Him from the dead.”
J. W. S.