And no lie was found in their mouths; they are blameless.In their mouth was found no lie, for they are blameless.And in their mouth was found no guile: for they are without fault before the throne of God.And in their mouth was found no lie: they are without blemish.
6 sermons cite this verse
"Oh, it will be joyful When we meet to part no more!' Here we are plagued and tormented by sin—but there, "they are without fault before the Throne of God." Here the fiery darts of the Wicked One are continually flying all around us—but there, they are out of range of the devil's most deadly artillery! Yet let not one of us sigh and cry for the wings of a dove, that we may fly away and be at rest. In God's good time, He will beckon us across the narrow stream of death! And till then let us patiently wait and earnestly work for Him who is all our salvation and all our desire. Now, my Hearers, I have set before you two men representing two very different classes—those who have their portion in this life, and those whose inheritance is in the heavenly Canaan, the land of perfect peace and perfect bliss. What is the great objective upon which your soul is set? To get on in this world, to make money, to win fame, honor, glory, power? Oh, that is a poor ambition! And if you could attain it all, your wreath of bay leaves would soon wither—and then what would you have left? "What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" Profit him? It would be an eternal and irretrievable loss! Oh, seek not such "gain" as that, but "seek you first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you"—insofar as God sees that it shall be for His …
PAUL had just been giving a brief description of the great gathering of the children of Israel around Mount Sinai, "the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire," like a huge volcano. He had vividly portrayed "the blackness, and darkness, and tempest, and the sound of trumpet, and the voice of words," and the frightened multitudes standing, trembling, at a distance, and even Moses, their great leader, so alarmed that he cried out, "I exceedingly fear and quake." Paul intends that description to teach us the effect that the legal dispensation can produce—it can alarm and condemn—but it cannot save! You who are under the Law of God, you who are trying to win God's favor by your good works. You who fancy that human merit can bring you salvation, look to the flames which Moses saw and sink, and tremble and despair! You who think that you can live as the Law requires and so attain to everlasting life, may well stand shivering and trembling before this Almighty, though invisible God whose lightning blazes before your eyes and whose voice of thunder must alarm the most stout heart! Terrible is the plight of the man who has to depend upon what Sinai can give him—he is wretched in life, he shall be troubled in death, he shall be lost forever in eternity! "By the works of the Law shall no flesh be justified." "As many as are of the works of the Law are under the curse." "By Grace are you saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast." …
Who have never known His name?" Not that it is of any use having such a hymn as that in the hymnbook, for you never ought to sing it! It is not a thing to sing, but to groan out all alone before our God. I think the most of us are compelled to do that sometimes. Well, blessed be God, at the daybreak, all these fears will be gone! We shall never be able, then, to doubt our interest in Christ because we shall be with Him where He is—and shall behold His Glory! Then we shall never have any fear lest after having preached to others we, ourselves, should be cast away. We shall not be afraid lest we should be shipwrecked, for though it may be but on boards and broken pieces, yet we shall then have come safely to land—all these fears will have vanished forever! May not these shadows represent to some of us that daily sense of sin which comes upon us and drives us to the Cross? Oh, the somber shade which a tender conscience feels under a sense of sin! Some men have not any such tenderness. They can make a profession and be easy in living inconsistent lives. Not so a heart that lives near to Christ—the more pure it is, the more it mourns over its spots! If you are in the dark, you will not see the filth upon your garments, but the brighter the light the more you will see every spot—and the more you will mourn over it. I believe that the more sanctified a man becomes by the work of the Holy Spirit within, the more heavy the burden of sin becomes to him. It is not that he has more sin, but that he feels that he has more. And in the light of the love of Christ, which he enjoys in the secret places of communion, he sees more of the abomination of sin and, therefore, is more humbled under it. Oh, but it shall all flee away presently! They are without fault before the Throne of God! He shall present us, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing! Oh, what a blessed presentation! At the daybreak, truly, the shadows will flee away! …
"Your beauty are your glorious dress." Anticipate the time when you shall be admired of men and of angels, attired in that complete garment. These robes are said to be "white robes"—white to indicate purity—and "they are without fault before the Throne of God." White—as distinctive of their priestly order, "for they are kings and priests unto God forever and ever." White—as an emblem of triumph, for now they are victors over every foe. But why and how came those robes to be white? Their robes are white because His robes were red—His robes I say. Oh, how the angels gazed with astonishment, and asked with eagerness, as they saw Him come back from Calvary, "Why are Your garments red? Why are You red in Your apparel as one that has trodden the winepress?" And He answered, "I have trodden the winepress alone, and of the people there was none with Me." Because the Savior bled and dyed His garments with His own blood for us, therefore, filthy as the saints' garments once were, they are now robed in pure immaculate white, whiter than any fuller could make them, glistening like the sun! …
And how many young spirits there are on earth that are hungering after knowledge who would fain get the hammer and break the rock, and find out the history of the globe in the past. They would follow philosophy, if they could, to its source, and find out the root of the matter. Oh! to know, to know, to know! The human mind pants and thirsts for this. But there they know even as they are known. I do not know that in heaven they know all things—that must be for the Omniscient only—but they know all they need or really want to know; they are satisfied there. There will be no longer searching with a spirit that is ill at ease. They may, perhaps, make progress even there, and the scholar may become daily more and more wise; but there shall never be such a hungering and thirsting as to cause their mental faculties the slightest pang. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more. Oh! blessed land where the seething ocean of man's mind is hushed, and sleeps in everlasting calm! Oh! blessed country where the hungry spirit, that crieth every hour for bread, and yet for more, and yet for more, and spends its labour for that which satisfieth not, shall be fed with the bread of angels, and be satisfied with favour and full of the goodness of the Lord. But, dear friends, surely the text also means our spiritual hungering and thirsting. "Blessed is the man that hungers and thirst to-day after righteousness, for he shall be filled." This a kind of hunger that we ought to desire to have; this is a sort of thirst that the more you have of it will be the indication of the possession of more grace. On earth it is good for saints to hunger and to thirst spiritually, but up there they have done even with that blessed hunger and that blessed thirst. Today, beloved, some of us are hungering after holiness. Oh! what would I not give to be holy, to be rid of sin, of every evil thing about me! My eyes—ah! adieu sweet light, if I might also say, "Adieu sin! "My mouth—ah! well would I be content to be dumb if I might preach by a perfect life on earth! There is no faculty I know of that might not be cheerfully surrendered if the surrender of it would deprive us of sin. But they never thirst for holiness in heaven, for this excellent reason, that they are without fault before the throne of God. Does it not make your mouth water? Why this is the luxury of heaven to be perfect. Is not this—the heaven of heaven, to be clean rid of the root and branch of sin, and not a rag or bone, or piece of a bone of our old depravity left—all gone like our Lord, made perfect without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing. And here, too, brethren and sisters, we very rightly hunger and thirst after full assurance and confidence. Many are hungering after it; they hope they are saved, and they thirst to be assured that they are. But there is no such thirst as that in heaven, for, having crossed the golden threshold of Paradise, no saint ever asks himself, "Am I saved?" They see his face without a cloud between; they bathe in the sea of his love; they cannot question that which they perpetually enjoy. So, too, on earth I hope we know what it is to hunger and thirst for fellowship with Christ. Oh! when he is gone from us—if he do but hide his face from us, how we cry, "My soul desires thee in the night"! We cannot be satisfied unless we have the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost. But in heaven they have no such thing. There the shepherd is always with the Sheep, the King is ever near them, and because of his perpetual presence their hungering and their thirsting will be banished for ever. Thus much upon those evils, then, that would arise from within. As they are perfect, whatever comes from within is a source of pleasure to them, and never of pain. …
Such peace is of a heavenly kind, and for heavenly minds. Carnal spirits, greedy, envious spirits—what would they do in Heaven? If they were in the place called Heaven, they could not be in the state called Heaven, and Heaven is more a state than a place! Though it is probably both, yet it is mainly the former, a state of happiness, a state of holiness, a state of spirituality which it would not be possible for the worldly to reach! Therefore, you see, Brothers and Sisters, the Holy Spirit must come and give us new affections. We must have a fresh objective set before us. In fact, instead of minding the things that are seen, we must come to love and to aspire to the things that are not seen! Our affections, instead of going downwards to things of earth, must be allured by things that are above, where Christ sits at the right hand of God! In addition to our spiritual death and worldliness, we are all unholy by nature. Not one of us is pure in the sight of God. We are all defiled and all defiling, but in Heaven they are "without fault before the Throne of God." No sin is tolerated there—no sin of thought, or word, or deed! Angels and glorified spirits delight to do God's will without hesitation, without demur, without omission. And we, like they, must be holy, or we cannot enter into their sacred fellowship— "Those holy gates forever bar Pollution, sin, and shame! …