Facing the World's Offenses: Finding Peace in Troubled Times

Standing Firm Against the World's Stumbling Blocks

1. The divine lessons we've just heard warn us to build up a storehouse of virtues and to fortify the Christian heart against the offenses predicted to come—and this from the Lord's mercy. For what is a human being, as Scripture says, "that You are mindful of him?" (Psalm 8:4). "Woe to the world because of offenses," says the Lord (Matthew 18:7). The Truth speaks this; He alarms and warns us. He wouldn't want us to be off our guard, yet He certainly wouldn't want to make us desperate either.

Against this "woe," against this evil that is to be feared, dreaded, and guarded against, Scripture counsels, exhorts, and instructs us: "Great peace have those who love Your law, and nothing causes them to stumble" (Psalm 119:165). God has shown us an enemy to guard against, but He hasn't forgotten to show us a defensive wall as well.

You might have been wondering, as you heard, "Woe to the world because of offenses," where you could go beyond the world to avoid these offenses. But to avoid offenses, where will you go beyond the world unless you fly to the One who made the world? And how can we fly to the One who made the world unless we listen to His law, which is preached everywhere? Yet merely listening isn't enough—we must love it. Scripture doesn't make you secure against offenses by saying, "Great peace have those who hear Your law." For "not the hearers of the law are just in God's sight" (Romans 2:13). Rather, because "the doers of the law will be justified" and "faith works through love" (Galatians 5:6), it says, "Great peace have those who love Your law, and nothing causes them to stumble."

This teaching agrees with what we've chanted: "But the meek shall inherit the earth, and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace" (Psalm 37:11). For "great peace have those who love Your law." These "meek" ones are those who "love God's law." For "blessed is the man whom You instruct, O Lord, and teach out of Your law, that You may give him rest from the days of adversity, until the pit is dug for the wicked" (Psalm 94:12-13).

Though Scripture's words may seem diverse, they flow together into one meaning. Whatever you can hear from that rich fountain—as long as you accept it and live in loving harmony with the truth—will fill you with peace, glow with love, and fortify you against offenses.

2. Our task, then, is to see, seek, or learn how we must be "meek." We're guided by what I've just quoted from the Scriptures to find what we're looking for. Pay attention, beloved, for a moment. We're discussing something important: how to be meek—a necessary quality in life's adversities. But it's not this life's adverse circumstances that are called "offenses." Let me explain what "offenses" are.

For instance, a person under harsh necessity may be weighed down by trouble. Being weighed down with trouble is not itself an offense. Even martyrs were pressed by such troubles, but they weren't oppressed by them. Beware of an offense, but don't be so concerned about troubles. Trouble may press you, but an offense oppresses you.

What's the difference? In times of trouble, you prepare to maintain patience, hold fast to constancy, not abandon faith, and not consent to sin. If you maintain these virtues, the trouble pressing on you won't cause your downfall. Instead, that trouble will serve the same purpose as an olive press—not destroying the olive but extracting the oil. In short, if during such pressing trouble you give praise to God, how useful this pressing will be, producing such oil! The apostles sat in chains under such pressure, and in that pressure they sang hymns to God. What precious oil was pressed out then!

Job sat under heavy pressure on the dunghill—without resources, without help, without possessions, without children, full only of worms as far as his body was concerned. Yet because he was full of God within, he praised God, and that pressure was no "offense" to him. Where, then, was the "offense"? It came when his wife approached him and said, "Speak a word against God, and die" (Job 2:9). Though the devil had taken everything from him, an Eve was reserved for the suffering man—not to console him but to tempt him.

See where the offense was. She exaggerated his miseries, and her own miseries with his, and began to persuade him to blaspheme. But because he was "meek," because "God had instructed him from His law and given him rest from the days of adversity," he had "great peace" in his heart as "one loving the law of God, and nothing was an offense to him." She was an offense, but not to him.

Look at this meek man, someone instructed in God's law—the eternal law of God, I mean. The law on tablets hadn't yet been given to the Jews in Job's time, but the eternal law remained in godly hearts, from which the law given to the people was copied. Because he had "been given rest from the days of adversity" by God's law and "had great peace as one loving the law of God," see how meek he is and how he responds. Learn from this who the meek are. "You speak," he says, "like one of the foolish women. If we have received good from the hand of the Lord, shall we not accept adversity?" (Job 2:10).

3. We've seen through this example who the meek are. Let's define them in words if we can. The meek are those who, in all their good deeds, in everything they do well, find nothing pleasing but God, and to whom, in all the evils they suffer, God is not displeasing. Now, brothers, pay attention to this rule, this pattern. Let's stretch ourselves toward it, seeking growth so we might fulfill it. What good is it if we plant and water, unless God gives the increase? "Neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase" (1 Corinthians 3:7).

Listen, whoever you are who would be "meek," who would have "rest from the days of adversity," who "loves the law of God" so that "no offense comes to you" and you "have great peace," so you may "inherit the earth and delight in abundant peace"—listen, whoever you are who would be "meek." In whatever good you do, don't be pleased with yourself. "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble" (James 4:6). So in whatever good you do, let nothing but God please you, and in whatever evil you suffer, let God not displease you.

What more do you need? Do this, and you'll live. The days of adversity won't overwhelm you; you'll escape what is said: "Woe to the world because of offenses." For to which world is there woe because of offenses? To the one of which it's said, "And the world did not know Him" (John 1:10). Not to the world of which it's said, "God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself" (2 Corinthians 5:19).

There's an evil world and a good world. The evil world consists of all the evil people in this world, and the good world consists of all the good people. As we often observe with a field: "This field is full"—of what? Of wheat. Yet we also correctly say, "This field is full of chaff." Likewise with a tree: it's full of fruit. Another says it's full of leaves. Both statements are true. The abundance of leaves hasn't taken away room for the fruit, nor has the abundance of fruit driven away the leaves. The tree is full of both, but the wind searches out one, while the farmer gathers in the other.

So when you hear, "Woe to the world because of offenses," don't be afraid. "Love the law of God, and nothing will be an offense to you."

4. Your wife may come to you advising you to do something wrong. You love her as a wife should be loved; she is one of your members. "But if your eye causes you to sin, if your hand causes you to sin, if your foot causes you to sin," you've just heard the Gospel: "cut them off and cast them from you" (Matthew 18:8-9). Whoever is dear to you, whoever you hold in high esteem, let them remain dear and highly esteemed only as long as they don't begin to cause you to sin—that is, to advise you to do something evil.

Listen to how "offense" is defined. I've already given the example of Job and his wife, but the word "offense" didn't appear there. Hear the Gospel: when the Lord prophesied about His Passion, Peter began to persuade Him not to suffer. "Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me" (Matthew 16:23). Here the Lord, who has given you an example of life, has taught you both what an "offense" is and how to avoid it. He had just said to the same person, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah" (Matthew 16:17), showing him to be one of His members. But when Peter begins to be an offense, the Lord cuts off the member—though He later restored the member and put it back in its place.

Someone becomes an "offense" to you when they begin to persuade you to do something evil. And here, beloved, take note: this usually happens not through evil intentions but through misguided good will. Your friend who loves you and whom you love in return, your father, your brother, your child, your wife—they see you in trouble and would have you do what is evil.

What do I mean by "they see you in trouble"? They see you suffering some hardship. Perhaps you're suffering for righteousness' sake, because you refuse to give false testimony. To illustrate (examples abound, for "woe to the world because of offenses"): a powerful person, to cover up theft and plunder, asks you to provide false witness. You refuse to bear false witness so as not to deny Him who is true. The powerful person becomes angry, oppresses you. A friend comes who doesn't want you in this difficult situation: "Please, do what you're told! What's the big deal?"

Perhaps, like Satan with the Lord, he even quotes Scripture: "It is written concerning You, 'He shall give His angels charge over You,' and, 'In their hands they shall bear You up, lest You dash Your foot against a stone'" (Matthew 4:6). Maybe this friend, seeing you're a Christian, wants to persuade you from the Law to do what he thinks you should: "Do what the other person tells you." "What? Do what the other wants?" "But it's a lie, it's false." "Haven't you read, 'All men are liars'?" (Psalm 116:11).

Now he is an "offense." He's a friend, but what will you do? He's an eye, a hand. "Cut it off and cast it from you." What does "cut it off and cast it from you" mean? Don't consent to him. Our body parts create unity through consensus—they live by consensus and are joined together. Where there's dissent, there's disease or injury. He's one of your members; you'll love him. But he's an offense to you: "Cut him off and cast him from you." Don't consent to him; drive him from your ears. Perhaps he'll return reformed.

5. How will you do what I say—"cut him off and cast him from you"—and potentially reform him? He tried to persuade you from the Law to tell a lie, saying, "Speak." He may not have dared to say, "Tell a lie," but rather, "Say what the other person wants." You say, "But it's a lie." And to excuse it, he says, "All men are liars."

Then you, my brother, should say in response, "The lying mouth slays the soul" (Wisdom 1:11). Note this—it's no small thing you've heard: "The lying mouth slays the soul." What can that powerful enemy who oppresses me do to me that makes you pity my condition and want to spare me this hardship, when by your advice you would make me evil? What can that powerful person do to me? What can he oppress? My body.

I grant he may oppress it to the point of destruction. But how much more gently he deals with me than I would with myself if I were to lie! He kills my body; I kill my soul. He, in his power and anger, slays the body; "the lying mouth slays the soul." He slays the body, which must die anyway, even if not slain; but the soul, which iniquity doesn't slay, truth preserves forever.

Preserve what you can preserve, and let what must perish sometime or other perish now. You've given an answer, but you haven't addressed the claim that "All men are liars." Respond to this too, so he doesn't think he's made a persuasive case for lying by bringing testimony from the Law, trying to use the Law against the Law. The Law says, "You shall not bear false witness" (Exodus 20:16), and the Law also says, "All men are liars."

Go back to what I suggested earlier when I defined the "meek" person. The "meek" person is one to whom, in all the good things he does, nothing but God is pleasing, and to whom, in all the evils he suffers, God is not displeasing. So answer the one who says, "Lie, for it is written, 'All men are liars'": I will not lie, for it is written, "The lying mouth slays the soul." I will not lie, because it is written, "You shall destroy those who speak lies" (Psalm 5:6). I will not lie, because it is written, "You shall not bear false witness." Though the person I displease with the truth may harass my body with oppression, I will listen to my Lord: "Do not fear those who kill the body" (Matthew 10:28).

6. "How then are all men liars? What! Aren't you a man?" Answer quickly and truly: "O that I might not be merely a man, so that I might not be a liar." For look: "The Lord looks down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there are any who understand, who seek God. They have all turned aside, they have together become corrupt; there is none who does good, no, not one" (Psalm 14:2-3). Why? Because they wanted to remain mere children of men. But to deliver them from these iniquities, to heal and transform the children of men, "He gave them the right to become children of God" (John 1:12).

What's so surprising? You were men, you were children of men. You were all merely human, and therefore liars, for "all men are liars." But God's grace came to you and "gave you the right to become children of God." Listen to the voice of my Father saying, "I have said, 'You are gods, and all of you are children of the Most High'" (Psalm 82:6).

Since they are human and children of men, if they aren't children of the Most High, they're liars, for "all men are liars." But if they're children of God—if they've been redeemed by the Savior's grace, purchased with His precious Blood, born again of water and the Spirit, and predestined to inherit heaven—then indeed they are children of God and thereby gods. What would a lie have to do with you?

Adam was merely human; Christ was both human and God—God, the Creator of all creation. Adam was merely human; Christ, the Man, is the Mediator with God, the Only Son of the Father, the God-Man. See—you, O human, are far from God, and God is far above humanity. Between them, the God-Man placed Himself. Acknowledge Christ, and through Him as Man, ascend to God.

7. Being now reformed, and, if my words have been effective, "meek," let us "hold fast our confession without wavering" (Hebrews 10:23). Let us love God's law so we may escape what is written: "Woe to the world because of offenses."

Now I want to say a few words about "offenses," of which the world is full, and why offenses multiply and pressing troubles abound. The world is laid waste; the winepress is being trodden. Ah, Christians, heavenly vine, strangers on earth who seek a city in heaven and long to be associated with the holy angels—understand that you've come here only on the condition that you will soon depart. You're passing through the world, striving to reach the One who created it.

Don't let those who love the world and wish to remain in it (though they too are forced to leave it, willing or not) disturb, deceive, or seduce you. These pressing troubles are not offenses. Be righteous, and they will be merely exercises for you. Tribulation comes; what it will be depends on what it finds you to be—either an exercise or a condemnation. Tribulation is like fire: if it finds you to be gold, it removes impurities; if it finds you to be chaff, it turns you to ashes. So the abundant troubles are not themselves "offenses." But what are "offenses"? Those expressions and words that address us this way: "See what Christian times bring about"—this is the true offense.

This is said to you with this purpose: that if you love the world, you may blaspheme Christ. And this is said by someone who is your friend and counselor—your "eye." This is said by someone who serves you and shares your labors—your "hand." This is said perhaps by someone who supports you and lifts you from a low earthly state—your "foot." Cast them all aside, cut them off, throw them away; don't consent to them. Answer such people as the one who was advised to bear false witness answered. Say to the person who says, "Look how in Christian times such pressing troubles exist, how the whole world is laid waste": "This is exactly what Christ foretold before it happened."

8. Why are you disturbed? Your heart is troubled by the pressing troubles of the world, like that ship in which Christ was asleep. What's the cause of your troubled heart, brave soul? That ship in which Christ sleeps is the heart in which faith sleeps. For what new thing, what surprising thing are you being told, Christian? "In Christian times the world is laid waste, the world is failing." Didn't your Lord tell you the world would be laid waste? Didn't your Lord tell you the world would fail? Why did you believe the promise when it was made but are disturbed now when it's being fulfilled?

So the tempest beats fiercely against your heart; beware of shipwreck! Wake up Christ! The Apostle says, "that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith" (Ephesians 3:17). Christ dwells in you through faith. Present faith means Christ is present; awakened faith means Christ is awake; slumbering faith means Christ is asleep.

Arise and stir yourself; say, "Lord, we are perishing." See what the pagans say to us, and worse, what evil Christians say! Wake up, O Lord; we are perishing! Let your faith awaken, and Christ begins to speak to you: "Why are you troubled? I told you all these things beforehand. I foretold them so that when evils came, you might hope for good things and not lose heart in the midst of evil."

Are you surprised that the world is failing? Be surprised that the world has grown old. It's like a person who is born, grows up, and ages. There are many complaints in old age: coughing, catarrh, weak eyes, anxiety, and exhaustion. So when a person is old, they're full of complaints; likewise, the world is old and full of troubles.

Is it a small thing God has done for you, that in the world's old age, He has sent Christ to you, to renew you when everything is failing? Don't you know He foretold this in the seed of Abraham? "In your seed," says the Apostle, "which is Christ... He does not say, 'And to seeds,' as of many, but as of one, 'And to your seed,' which is Christ" (Galatians 3:16). Therefore, a son was born to Abraham in his old age because in the old age of this world, Christ was to come.

He came when all things were growing old and made them new. As a created, perishing thing, the world was declining to its fall. It couldn't help but abound in troubles. Christ came both to console you amid present troubles and to promise you everlasting rest. Choose not to cling to this aging world. Don't refuse to grow young in Christ, who tells you, "The world is perishing, the world is growing old, the world is failing, gasping from the heavy breathing of old age. But don't fear: 'Your youth shall be renewed like the eagle's'" (Psalm 103:5).

9. "See," they say, "it's in Christian times that Rome is perishing." Perhaps Rome isn't perishing; perhaps she's only being scourged, not utterly destroyed. Perhaps she's being chastened, not brought to nothing. It may be so: Rome will not perish if the Romans don't perish. And they won't perish if they praise God; they will perish if they blaspheme Him.

For what is Rome but the Romans? The question isn't about its wood and stones, its lofty isolated palaces, and its spacious walls. All this was built only on the condition that it would fall someday. When humans built it, they laid stone on stone; when humans destroyed it, they removed stone from stone. Humans made it; humans destroyed it. Is any injury done to Rome because someone says, "She is falling"? No, not to Rome, but perhaps to its builder.

Do we do its builder any injury by saying, "Rome is falling"—Rome, which Romulus built? This world itself will be burned with fire, which God built. But neither does what humans have made fall to ruin except when God wills it, nor what God has made, except when He wills. For if human work doesn't fall without God's will, how can God's work fall by human will?

Yet God made the world that was destined to fall for your sake, and He made you as one destined to die. Man himself, the city's ornament, inhabitant, ruler, governor, comes on the condition that he must go, is born on the condition that he must die, enters the world on the condition that he must pass away. "Heaven and earth will pass away" (Matthew 24:35); what wonder then if sometime there should be an end to a single city?

Yet perhaps the city's end hasn't come now; yet come it will someday. But why does Rome perish amid the sacrifices of Christians? Why was her mother, Troy, burned amid the sacrifices of pagans? The gods in whom the Romans placed all their hope—yes, the Roman gods in whom the pagan Romans placed their hope—were moved from the flames of Troy to found Rome. These very gods of Rome were originally the gods of Troy. Troy was burned, and Aeneas took the fugitive gods—or rather, himself a fugitive, he took away these senseless gods. They could be carried by the fugitive, but they couldn't flee themselves.

Coming with these gods into Italy, with these false gods, he founded Rome. It would take too long to go through the whole story, but I'll briefly mention what their own writings contain. A well-known author of theirs says: "As I have received the account, the Trojans who under Aeneas's guidance were wandering about as fugitives without any settled home, originally built and inhabited Rome." So they had their gods with them, built Rome in Latium, and placed there the gods to be worshipped that were previously worshipped in Troy.

Their poet introduces Juno, incensed against Aeneas and the fugitive Trojans, saying:

"A race of wandering slaves abhorred by me, With prosperous passage cuts the Tuscan sea, To fruitful Italy their course they steer, And for their vanquished gods, design new temples there."

Now when these vanquished gods were carried into Italy, was it as a protecting deity or as a presage of their future fall?

"Love the law of God, and nothing shall be an offense to you" (Psalm 119:165). We pray you, we beseech you, we exhort you: be meek, sympathize with the suffering, support the weak. On this occasion of the gathering of so many strangers, needy, and suffering people, let your hospitality and good works abound. Let Christians do what Christ commands, and then the pagans will blaspheme only to their own harm.