Salvation

Sermons To

Sinners

by

Milburn Cockrell

Salvation - (Sermons To Sinners)

Copyright © 2003

Milburn Cockrell

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form,

except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review,

without permission in writing from the author or publisher.

ISBN 0-9716713-4-6

Published by the Berea Baptist Church

PO Box 39

Mantachie, Mississippi 38855-0039 U.S.A.

(662) 282-7794

www.bereabaptistchurch.org

eBook Conversion Notes

The text of this eBook is essentially the same as found in the 2003 printed edition.

Due to eBook variables there may be some small formatting variances.

If any textual errors varying from the original text are found you may contact me through the Berea Baptist Church and I will correct them and publish a new eBook edition.

James L. Reynolds

Cornersville, TN

July, 2020

Contents

Acknowledgement

Chapter 1 - I. A FOOL’S PARADISE

Chapter 2 - II. NOT SAVED

Chapter 3 - III. THE ONLY SAVING NAME

Chapter 4 - IV. PREPARE TO MEET THY GOD

Chapter 5 - V. THE GATE TO GLORY

Chapter 6 - VI. GRACE ABOUNDING TO THE CHIEFEST OF SINNERS

Chapter 7 - VII. THE BROKEN-HEARTED SINNER

Chapter 8 - VIII. MOURNING FOR CHRIST

Chapter 9 - IX. WHAT HAPPENS IN SALVATION

Chapter 10 - X. ASSURANCE OF SALVATION

Chapter 11 - XI. THE RUIN OF AN OBSTINATE SINNER

Other Books Available By The Author

Acknowledgements

The following people are to be thanked for their contribution to the publication of this book: Sister Nancy Elmore for her contribution to make the printing of this book possible and Sister Sherry Bennett for setting the text on most of the chapters of this book. My greatest thanks goes to all who purchase and read this book. God bless you all.

I. A FOOL’s PARADISE

“There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” (Proverbs 14:12).

It is plain from this text that many whose end shall be destruction think that they are traveling in the way to eternal life. Multitudes are traveling the broad road to destruction in a way that seems right to them. Men please themselves that they are as they should be. They feel all will be well at last. Such people live in a world of make-believe, a world of unreality, and a fool’s paradise! They are ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.

SOME WHO DWELL IN THIS PLACE

First, the worldly man dwells in a fool’s paradise. He thinks of the law of God as if it had but one table, the first being entirely overlooked. He passes in the circles of the business world for a man of good character. He conforms to the rules of civilized society, which demand industry, veracity, honesty, and sobriety. Society approves and applauds his obedience to conventional morality. Because such a man is diligent in business, deceives no one, and pays his honest debts, he considers his way is right. He reasons that if man approves of his conduct, so must God. It never crosses his mind that the Scripture says “that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God” (Luke 16:15).

Social morality is sadly lacking, for the rule of a worldly man regards only the external life of a man. His rule does not take into consideration thought, feeling, desire, and the unexpressed things of the soul. By means of his rule vice often passes under the name of virtue and covetousness is disguised under the name of prudence. A worldly-wise man’s actions spring from the wrong motives. The scribes and Pharisees of old were conventionally right. Christ compared them unto “whited sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness” (Matthew 23:27). Such a man lives “without God.” He is a stranger to a renewed heart. He has no regard for Divine authority as his rule or Divine glory as his end. With all his earth-born virtues, he cannot escape the damnation of Hell.

Second, the atheist abides in a fool’s paradise. He is one of the most daring beings in the universe, a contemner of God, who explodes His laws by denying His existence. He questions the truth of Christianity because He hates the practice which faith requires. He boasts of his great learning in human matters, forgetting that the Bible says “the world by wisdom knew not God” (I Corinthians 1:21). He cares not that God’s Word declares: “fools die for want of wisdom” (Proverbs 10:21). Every human creature, which denies his Creator is one of the Devil’s deceived dupes.

No intelligent man will give up his house until he knows where he is going to move. No one will throw away the poorest of a garment until he has a better one. But for no reason whatever, men recklessly give up the idea of a loving, living God who rules over all. But when you put away the mystery of God, you get in return the greater mystery of godlessness. The atheist’s account of creation is a fool’s account. A chair could not make itself, but the sun is self-created! Your coat had a maker, but you soul had none! The figurehead of a monument was carved, but the carver became a face by chance, without design or without law! No wonder that the Bible declares: “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God” (Psalm 14:1).

Third, the hypocrite walks in a fool’s paradise. He has been baptized and is a member of some church. He follows the routine of external religious observances. He reads the Bible a little. He goes to church now and then and seems to be religious. Sometimes when a pious mood comes over him, he might even say a little prayer to God. He is sincere, zealous, and honest, yet he is contented in the mists and shadows of uncertainty. All seems well with him in this sophisticated age of easy morals and loose living. Proverbs 12:15 says: “The way of a fool is right in his own eyes.”

Regularity in church, conformity to the rites of worship, the singing of hymns, all of this passes for religion, but it is not true religion. It is mechanical churchanity. It is the motion of the body, but not the soul. God will not accept the worthless offering of outward homage. These services cannot terminate in eternal life, for there is no life in them. The way of the formal professor is the way of death. Proverbs 30:12 says: “There is a generation that are pure in their own eyes, and yet is not washed from their filthiness.”

Fourth, the backslider in heart strolls in a fool’s paradise. He imagines there is no harm in acts of sin. He says to himself: “I’ll be saved no matter how I live. I am eternally secure in Christ even if I die in unbelief.” He departs from God while holding on to his profession of faith. It is not long before little sins turn into big sins. He becomes more and more careless, nearer and nearer to indifference, until he has ceased to run well and gives the enemies of the Lord great occasion to blaspheme. The Bible says: “The backslider in heart shall be filled with his own ways” (Proverbs 14:14).

God will not tolerate a spoiled brat in His family. A child of God cannot sin and escape punishment: “But he that doeth wrong shall receive for the wrong which he hath done: and there is no respect of persons” (Colossians 3:25). The Lord will judge sin in the lives of His people (Hebrews 10:30-31). If a child of God persists in open sin, God will take away his natural life: “There is a sin unto death” (I John 5:16). It is a fearful thing to suffer “the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus” (I Corinthians 5:5).

Fifth, a person who has a dead orthodoxy moves around in a fool’s paradise. He holds an orthodox creed and is ready to defend it in all points. His way seems right, yet in his heart there is no spark of heavenly flame. The conscience is not sensitive and tender. He does not really love God or the brotherhood. In truth, his religion is the Devil of selfishness in the costume of piety. He has feelings, but his feelings are all concerned for his own selfish interests. His prayers are selfish entreaties for deliverance from misery and for the attainment of worldly prosperity.

Such a person’s faith does not work by love, and without pure, fervent love for God and man, this dead orthodoxy profits nothing. He knows the truth of sovereign grace, but he does not dare share it with any other person in the world. He claims to believe in church truth, but he never attends church. He says he believes that Jesus Christ may come at any moment, but he acts as if He will never come a second time. He says he believes in tithing, but he robs God and His church every week. He contends that the Bible is the Word of God, but he reads it less than the words of men. He has faith without works which the Bible says is dead (James 2:20). His way seems right, but it is the way of death. A man may go to hell from a seat in the Baptist church as well as from a seat in a Hellhole of the underworld! How terrible for a man to hear himself condemned by the Judge of all the earth for his dead orthodoxy when he expects to hear the words: “Well done, good and faithful servant!”

WHY MEN DWELL THERE

The Scripture assigns a number of reasons why people are content to dwell in a fool’s paradise. First, they live in this world of unreality because they are under “the power of darkness” (Colossians 1:13, Acts 26:18). The unbeliever is in the “snare of the devil,” and he is “taken captive by him at his will” (II Timothy 2:26). He walks “according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:2). Satan has blinded his eyes to the very gospel by which he must be saved (II Corinthians 4:3-4). His eyes are blinded by ignorance, error, and prejudice. This person is Satan’s sucker!

Second, every person not quickened by the Holy Spirit is deceived by sin and is its hopeless slave: “Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin” (John 8:34). A sinner is hooked on sin, and he can’t leave it alone. He loves it like a duck loves water. It seems to him to be the right thing to do at the time. You may warn him of sin’s ruinous powers only to find that your warning fell on deaf ears. The unrenewed sinner makes a mock of sin, dances merrily over the flaming pit, and plays with unquenchable fire. So long as one sin reigns in a man’s heart, he still lives in a fool’s paradise, for Jesus Christ is neither his Savior nor Lord!

Third, every person out of Christ has a wicked heart of unbelief with his being. Peter told Simon Magus: “… thy heart is not right in the sight of God” (Acts 8:21), and the same is true of every impenitent sinner in the world. The unregenerate heart is the seat of rebellion against God’s moral government of the world: “But this people hath a revolting and a rebellious heart; they are revolted and gone” (Jeremiah 5:23). Jeremiah 17:9 discloses the deceitfulness of the human heart: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked …”

Some blind leaders of the blind tell sinners to give their hearts to Jesus. Others tell sinners who have totally depraved hearts to open up their hearts and let Jesus come in. They say that the doorknob is on the inside and that Christ can’t get in until you open the door. I call such persons blind leaders of the blind because they have never been privileged to discover the utter ruin of man due to his fall in Adam. The Bible says: “He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool” (Proverbs 28:26). Sinners with totally depraved hearts can never know Christ as Savior and Lord, until the Lord gives them a heart to know Him. The Lord said in Jeremiah 24:7: “And I will give them an heart to know Me …”

Fourth, every unbelieving sinner out of Hell has a will, which is controlled by a totally depraved nature, and this nature has its seat in his deceitful heart. Proverbs 4:23 reads: “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.” Jesus said in John 5:40: “And ye will not come to Me, that ye might have life.” In these words Jesus Christ did not affirm that every sinner has a natural willingness to come to Him. Instead, He affirms the perverseness, the depravity, and the stubbornness of the human will. The unsaved man has no desire, inclination, or will to come to Christ for everlasting life. Because his will is under his depraved nature, he had rather go anyplace else or do anything else than to come to Christ. This is the reason that he dwells in a fool’s paradise.

Free-willism is a damnable heresy. No one has ever been saved by his supposed-to-exist free will. Man’s will is free to run away from Christ, but it is not free to come to Christ. What the sinner needs is God’s free grace. Salvation is “not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy” (Romans 9:16). Regeneration is not owing to man’s free will. It is something which takes place because God wills it. John 1:13 says: “Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” James 1:18 says that “of his own will begat He us with the word of truth.” Men will to come to Christ because that God made them willing to come: “Thy people shall be willing in the day of Thy power …” (Psalm 110:3).

HOW TO ESCAPE

No person wants to live and die in a world of camouflage, a world of make-believe, a fool’s paradise. The trouble with the world is that they sail the seas of optimism in boats without a compass and chart, never considering their ways until their boat is crushed against the rocks. They ride in their cars, spend their money, drink their liquor, and live a life of ease and pleasure. Never do they realize that each day of life brings them one day nearer the gates of Hell. Everything seems to be just fine and dandy. Little do they realize that they are living in hog heaven.

Satan has provided so much to keep people’s minds off of eternal things. There are movies, parties, entertainment, dances, rock and roll music, television, newspapers, books, magazines, etc. When you talk to them about their souls, they say, “I’ll think it over.” They are lying. They will not think upon these things. “The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but Israel doth not know, My people doth not consider” (Isaiah 1:3). The Lord says: “Consider your ways” (Haggai 1:5, 7), but sinners refuse to obey God in this commandment. They are given to spiritual insanity because they live in a fool’s paradise. When the prodigal “came to himself,” he ceased to be a prodigal son (Luke 15:17).

If you are to escape from this fool’s paradise, I must burst your bubble. I must tell you your true condition before a holy God. You must face the facts. You must be brought to see you are a fool who has mistaken death for life (Deuteronomy 30:19). The cover must drop off, and you must discover that sin cherished is self-delusion. If I fail to get you to wake up to your condition, you must fall from your high expectations of Heaven into the depths of Hell!

The Bible says that you are by nature a child of wrath (Ephesians 2:3). You are at present under the wrath of God (John 3:36) and soon to be subjected to “the wrath to come” (I Thessalonians 1:10). You need to “flee from the wrath to come” (Matthew 3:7).

The Scriptures reveal that you are morally or spiritually dead: “But she that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth” (I Timothy 5:6). Sin will soon destroy your soul: “The soul that sinneth, it shall die” (Ezekiel 18:4). “For the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23).

Your case has already been tried in the high court of Heaven, and the verdict is “guilty before God” (Romans 3:19). You are already condemned to die: “He that believeth on Him is not condemned; but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God” (John 3:18). As soon as you die, you will lift up your eyes in Hell-fire (Luke 16:23).

You are a son of Satan: “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do” (John 8:44). Unsaved people who are in Adam are the devil’s children, children of Belial, the serpent’s seed, children of that wicked one, a generation of vipers (Acts 13:10; I John 3:8). You partake of Satan’s nature, bear his image, obey his commandments, and follow his example. You are in truth a citizen of the kingdom of darkness.

You have no righteousness that He will accept: “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away” (Isaiah 64:6). If your best acts look like filthy rags, then pray tell what do your sins look like to God? In your unconverted state you cannot please God: “So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God” (Romans 8:8). In your lost condition, even your acts of worship are unacceptable to God: “The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the LORD” (Proverbs 15:8). This is because your acts of worship come from the wrong motives.

You are Hell-born, Hell-bent, Hell-deserving, and Hell-bound! If you continue to live in your fool’s paradise, you cannot escape the damnation of Hell. Psalm 9:17 declares: “The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.”

CONCLUSION

All roads are not the same, nor do they lead to the same destination. Many are going a way which seems right, but which ends in death. Right and wrong are independent of men’s opinions. What seems right to men is often wrong and the reverse. Men are responsible for their beliefs. A wrong belief, however sincere and honest, will lead to ruin. Self-deceivers are self-destroyers. “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself; but in Me is thine help” (Hosea 13:9).

There are some ways which do not even seem right to a man. Very few believe that men who live in open and flagrant wickedness will be saved. The habitual blasphemer, the bold Sabbath-breaker, the perpetual thief, the cold-blooded murderer, the wicked prostitute, and the cruel dope-pusher are believed by most to be on the road to Hell. Such acts can scarcely appear right to any man with a moral standard.

Are you dwelling in a fool’s paradise? Do you fancy you are as you should be? That your opinions and practices are right and will bring you to Heaven at last? Do you fondly assure yourself that God will not be hard upon you and that all will be well at last? If you do, you still are living in a fool’s paradise. “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” All of these “a” ways lead to destruction. Jesus Christ said; “I am THE way, THE truth, and THE life” (John 14:6). If you wish to go to Heaven, you must go His way, not your way!

II. NOT SAVED

“The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved” (Jeremiah 8:20).

When these words were spoken, Jerusalem was besieged by the Chaldeans. The inhabitants had waited long and had hoped the Egyptians would come to their aid. But now the dry summer season, when traveling was easy, was gone. Even the harvest was past and the year was drawing to a conclusion. A cold winter was approaching and there was no relief in sight. It seemed all hope for Jerusalem’s deliverance was passed. Immediate destruction stared them in the face. They merited such disappointment for they should not have sought the help of Egypt. Jeremiah had warned them against doing this. Jerusalem was not saved because she looked to the wrong source for salvation.

I freely grant that the salvation in this test is national salvation, but I want to make a spiritual application of it. It is sad, but true, that many harvest times have come and gone and yet many must confess, “I am not saved.” Church service after church service is held. Revivals come and go. The gospel of God’s free grace is preached from week to week, month to month, year to year. Occasionally, some are truly converted, yet others remain unsaved. This has been going on for centuries, and this process has greatly enlarged the population of hell.

OUR RESPONSIBILITY TO THE UNSAVED

Baptized believers are responsible to witness to the unsaved. Jesus Christ told His church: “… Ye shall be witnesses unto Me …” (Acts 1:8). We are responsible to tell the unsaved about the way of salvation by Christ. When Andrew was converted, he went and told his brother about Christ (John 1:41). The woman converted at Jacob’s well went and told her companions in sin about “the Christ” (John 4:29). The Apostle Paul told his conversion experience before kings and governors (Acts 22:1-11, 26:1-18). It is the duty of every born-again Christian to be a faithful witness for Jesus Christ.

I believe that we should use every means at our disposal to get out the gospel to a lost world. We should plant gospel seeds from house to house (Acts 5:42, 20:20). We should present the gospel in printed form - religious papers, tracts, books, etc. It should be preached on the radio and on the TV. The Word must be preached at home and abroad. Our goal should be to preach the whole gospel to the whole world before he comes.

Second, a child of grace should “live godly in Christ Jesus” (II Timothy 3:12). He should live “soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world” (Titus 2:12). His manner of life should be such as “becometh the gospel of Christ” (Philippians 1:27). He must not live “in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God” (I Peter 4:2). A believer must let his light “shine before men, that they may see” his “good works, and glorify” God (Matthew 5:16). Peter wrote: “Having your conversation honest among the Gentiles: that, whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation” (I Peter 2:12).

Third, it is our duty to pray for the unsaved. Paul penned these words: “Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved” (Romans 10:1). Paul yearned to see his kinsmen according to the flesh saved. He longed to see them turned from their evil ways and brought to believe in Christ, whom they had despised and rejected. This was not only his heart’s desire, but it was his prayer to God. Like Paul, we ought to pray for lost sinners, pray that God will save them by His mercy and grace. Any Christian who does not pray for lost sinners needs to be prayed for himself.

Christian parents have a duty to their unsaved children. They should take them to church to hear the gospel preached. Deuteronomy 31:12 says: “Gather the people together, men, and women, and children, and they stranger that is within thy gates, that they may hear, and that they may learn, and fear the LORD your God, and observe to do all the words of this law.” But taking them to public worship is not enough, for the parents must speak to their children about Christ. “For he established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children: That the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born; who should arise and declare them to their children: that they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God …” (Psalm 78:5-7).

It is never too early to begin to tell the young about the Savior. It was said of Timothy: “And that from a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus” (II Timothy 3:15). Have you so taught your children? Do they know the Scriptures that well?

WHAT IT MEANS TO BE SAVED

First, the unsaved man is spiritually dead; he is in the death shade. In Matthew 4:16 it is written: “The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up.” From this Scripture I see the unsaved sit in darkness and in the shadow of death. There is no spiritual light or life in their souls, and they are in danger of the second death. Truly such people sit “in darkness and in the shadow of death” (Psalm 107:10). There is no darkness like the darkness of spiritual death.

The unrenewed man is dead in a moral sense. He is not merely sick or injured as some suppose. The Bible says he is “dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1). No amount of spiritual life is active in him. He is totally unable to perform any spiritual act or to understand any spiritual thing. In relation to real spiritual life, the unregenerate is like a dead man in regard to the objects, which are around him. Songs and sermons do not alarm or arouse him. He sees no beauty in Christ that he should desire Him. There is in him no fear of either Hell or Heaven. He sees not, he hears not, he feels not, he knows not. He is a spiritual corpse.

The unconverted man is dead in a legal sense. He has been tried by the moral law of God and found to be “guilty before God” (Romans 3:19). John 3:18 says: “He that believeth on Him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God”. The unbeliever is not going to be condemned at the judgment; he is already condemned by the moral law of God. He is like a man who has been tried and found guilty in criminal court. He is in the death-cell awaiting his execution. He is on the borders of damnation though not yet damned to the fires of Hell. If he is ever to be saved, he must be given both spiritual and judicial life.

“When there is an estrangement of the soul from the Spirit of God and Christ, sanctifying, and comforting, and cheering it, then there is a death of the soul. The soul can no more act anything that is savingly and holily good, than the body can be without the soul. And as the body without the soul is a noisome, odious carcass, offensive in the eyes of its dearest friends, so the soul, without the Spirit of Christ quickening and seasoning it, and putting a comeliness and beauty upon it, is odious. All the clothes and flowers you put on a dead body cannot make it but a stinking carcass; so all the moral virtues, and all the honours in this world, put upon a man out of Christ, it makes him not a spiritual living soul; he is but a loathsome carrion, a dead carcass, in the sight of God. For he is under death. He is stark and stiff, unable to stir or move to any duty whatsoever. He has neither sense nor motion. Though such men live a common natural civil life, and walk up and down, yet they are dead men to God and to a better life. The world is full of dead men, that are dead while they are alive, as Paul speaks of the ‘widow that lives in pleasures’ (I Timothy 5:6). A fearful estate, if we had spiritual eyes to see it and think of it” (Sibbes, 1577-1635).

Second, the unsaved man is enslaved by sin. Jesus declared: “Whosoever comitteth sin is the servant of sin” (John 8:34). Any person who continues to make a practice of sinning will find himself in bondage to the hardest of all taskmasters. The worst tyrant any man can serve is his own selfish lusts. By rejecting the authority of God in the interest of self-will and supposed freedom, he sinks into the most hopeless slavery. He may kid himself into believing the fetters of sin are chains of gold, but in reality Christ said that they are rusty chains of iron heavy to be borne.

Peter told Simon Magus: “For I perceive that thou art in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity” (Acts 8:23). Here the word “gall” signifies “poison” (Job 20:14; Romans 3:13). The expression denotes the corrupting and poisoning influence of sin in the sinner. “The bond of iniquity” expresses how the sinner is confirmed in the habit of sin. Iniquity, like a chain, binds him. Proverbs 5:22 reads: “His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins.”

How many are enslaved by sin and refuse to acknowledge it! Peter said: “While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption: for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage” (II Peter 2:19). They are led captive by their besetting corruptions and infirmities as is a slave by his master. Selfish ambition, the crave for drink, the love of money, the thirst for power, the passion for gluttony, are the tyrants of the unsaved. But, alas, these wretched prisoners refuse to acknowledge their bondage! These poor slaves of sin never consider the misery they are in and the Hell to which they are approaching. They are bound hand and foot and delude themselves into believing they are free! God pity! If such persons are ever to be saved, they must be freed from the guilt and penalty of their sins.

Third, the impenitent man is Satan’s captive: “And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will” (II Timothy 2:26). He is walking “according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:2). Little does the unsaved man realize that by living in conformity to this world, he is doing the will and pleasure of the great Deceiver. He is a captive to Satan’s suggestions and temptations. He is asleep in the lap of the Devil (I John 5:19). If he is ever to be saved, he must come to himself and be delivered from the prison of Satan.

Fourth, the unbeliever is under the wrath of God: “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:36). So long as a man abides in unbelief, the just wrath of a sin-avenging God hangs over his head. He is under the curse of God’s broken law. This wrath of God against sin abides there and will continue to, so long as the man remains in unbelief. Psalms 34:16 says: “The face of the Lord is against them that do evil, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth.” If the sinner is to be saved from God’s wrath, faith must be given to him in order to remove his condemnation.

Fifth, the unbeliever is spiritually blind: “But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them” (II Corinthians 4:3-4). His understanding or mental perceptions are blinded to the very gospel by which he must be saved. The Prince of Darkness has increased his prejudice and blinded his mind with ignorance. He has penetrated into his very heart and has performed a work of evil upon the eyes of his understanding. How dreadful the thought of this. If man is ever to be saved, the eyes of his understanding must be opened to see the way of salvation by Christ.

Sixth, every unsaved man in the world is headed to Hell, if he continues in his present condition before God. Revelation 21:8 tells us that all who die in unbelief “shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.” Jesus said in Mark 16:16: “He that believeth not shall be damned.” By continuing in sin, you are gathering wood for your own everlasting bonfire. An unbeliever will be cast into Hell and will suffer until immortality dies and immutability changes. He will suffer till eternity ends and omnipotence ceases to be able to punish. It may well be your case that you are but one pulse beat away from everlasting fire! Please stop and consider your ways!

WHAT IT MEANS TO BE SAVED

First, to be saved is to receive spiritual life: “And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1). “It is the Spirit that quickeneth” (John 6:63). “… the Son giveth life to whom he will” (John 5:21 Improved Translation). God must give the spiritually dead sinner spiritual life. This quickened person is “alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:11). Until God gives spiritual life to the sinner, no spiritual acts are possible such as repentance and faith. We generally call this regeneration.

Second, the person enslaved by sin must be freed from the shackles of sin. Sin can only be forgiven by a bloody sacrifice (Ephesians 1:7). When Jesus died for sinners, He “put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself” (Hebrews 9:26). Those who believe in Him are redeemed “from all iniquity” (Titus 2:14) and “justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:24). They are freed from the guilt and penalty of their sins and shall never be condemned by God for them (Romans 8:1). This we usually call justification.

Third, the man who is a captive of Satan must be liberated. Salvation is being delivered “from the power of Satan unto God” (Acts 26:18). It is a great experience to be “delivered from the power of darkness” and to be translated “into the kingdom of His dear Son” (Colossians 1:13). The converted man ceases to be a subject of Satan’s kingdom and becomes a subject of Christ’s kingdom. The gospel of grace announces “deliverance to the captives” (Luke 4:18). Whenever Christ frees a sinner from the power of Satan, he is “free indeed” (John 8:36). He is no longer Satan’s slave but he has become “the Lord’s freeman” (I Corinthians 7:22). We call this Christian liberty.

Fourth, the unbeliever under the wrath of God must be brought to faith in Christ: “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:36). All men are by nature born in sin and are the children of wrath. Before one believes, his sins are unpardoned, unforgiven, and untaken away. Faith in Christ is the only means of deliverance from the wrath of God. Those whom God predestinates, God calls and justifies in due time. But there is no justification until there is faith.

Fifth, the sinner whose mind is blinded by sin and Satan must have his eyes opened and be turned from darkness to light (Acts 26:18). The eyes of the understanding must be opened by the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 1:17-18). This causes the sinner to see his wretched condition before God and to cry out for deliverance. In this state, He sees a divinely wrought vision of Christ, dying for his sins at Calvary (Zechariah 12:10, John 6:40). The “light of the glorious gospel of Christ … shine unto” him (II Corinthians 4:4). That light shines to give him “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (II Corinthians 4:6). From that day on, he is “enlightened” (Hebrews 6:4) and reckoned among “the children of light” (I Thessalonians 5:5).

Sixth, if a man is to be saved, he must be taken off the broad road to Hell, and be put in the way that leads to Heaven. God the Father must do this by His Son’s redemptive work and by the instrumentality of His Spirit. The Father must make him fit to be a partaker of “the inheritance of the saints in light” (Colossians 1:12). Those who come to Christ obtain and inheritance (Ephesians 1:11) and the Bible calls this an “eternal inheritance” (Hebrews 9:15). This inheritance is “reserved in heaven” for all believers in Jesus Christ (I Peter 1:3-4).

CONCLUSION

Now I pause to ask you: “Are you saved?” I did not ask if you were a church member. I asked if you were a Christian. Have you received Christ as your personal Savior? Do you know that you are redeemed by His precious blood? Have you assurance you have passed from death unto life? Have you made your calling and election sure? Must you confess like the inhabitants of Jerusalem did in our text: “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.”

Why are you still unsaved? Did Christ not die for sinners? Does He not still receive sinners? Has the gospel lost its power? Does Heaven say: “No Vacancy?” Is not Hell real? Is not eternity long? Is not death certain? Has not the Lord Jesus promised to save all who believe on Him? Yes, it is so, you say. Yes, this is what the Bible says many times. Then, sinner, flee from the wrath to come! Flee to Christ for refuge and safety. Flee so you may say: “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, the crops are saved, and I, too, am saved, thank God!”

III. THE ONLY SAVING NAME

“Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

Simon Peter had been summoned by the leader of his nation to answer for healing a lame man. While explaining the case of temporal salvation, Peter passed from the subject of bodily healing to soul healing. The lame man had been healed through the name of Jesus Christ. Going from the lower to the higher, Peter declared to them that there was no spiritual salvation out of the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Man’s Great Need

My text contains that great gospel word “salvation.” Because bodily healing is mentioned in the context (Acts 4:9), some insist that verse 12 is only concerned with bodily healing. According to them, Acts 4:12 means that by the invocation of the name of Jesus, a miraculous cure for bodily disease can take place. This is a most unworthy interpretation of the word “salvation.” The verb “to be saved” and the noun “salvation” are never in the Greek New Testament applied to the healing of bodily disease. “Salvation” is the technical expression for the whole work Christ is to accomplish for His people. His personal name “Jesus” signifies “savior” or “deliverer.” Matthew 1:21 says: “… thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.” The salvation in Acts 4:12 is spiritual and eternal salvation - a salvation from sin and its consequences.

“Salvation” is a very inclusive word. It covers all the redemptive actions from election in eternity passed to glorification in eternity future. So far as our experience is concerned, it involves the deliverance of the soul from sin, the cleansing of the conscience from guilt, and the renewing of a right spirit in man. Spiritual salvation heals the wounds and takes away the disease of sin. It removes the curse of the law for disobedience and puts one’s feet upon the rock Jesus Christ. It puts a new song in his heart and praise in his mouth. It goes on to make his life count for Christ. Eventually, it will restore from all He lost in the fall of Adam. Without this salvation in Christ, man is hopeless and helpless.

To most people living in this generation, salvation means no more than deliverance from Hell and admittance into Heaven. But this is not salvation. These two things are the effects of salvation. We are redeemed from Hell because we are saved by Christ, and we enter Heaven because Christ saved us on earth. Salvation does much more than close the gate of Hell and open the gate to Heaven. Real Bible salvation saves us from a wicked, sinful life on earth. It gives us a new nature, which makes a great change in the way we walk and talk. Saving grace makes us fear God and keep His commandments. It causes us to treat others as we would like to be treated. If your salvation experience did not make a great change in your life, then you do not know the grace of God in truth.

MAN CANNOT SAVE HIMSELF

There are only two religions in the world. There is one which makes man his own savior by meritorious deeds which he performs. This religion gives man all the glory for his own salvation. It makes man a worshipper of the works of his own hands. On the other hand, there is another religion which makes Christ man’s Savior by His meritorious deeds on the cross. This religion gives all the glory to God for man’s salvation. It makes man a worshipper of Christ his Savior. Man by nature prefers the plan of salvation which gives him all the glory and leaves God completely out.

Contrary to much modern thinking, man cannot be his own savior. He “must be saved” by another. Man cannot blot out his own sins, which are written in the memory of God. He cannot atone for his own guilt, for it is too great for one “without strength” (Romans 5:6). He cannot change his own heart, for it is incurably wicked (Jeremiah 17:9). He cannot purchase salvation with his own works because “by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in His sight” (Romans 3:20).

Salvation cannot be obtained by any merit or strength in man. He can destroy himself, but he cannot save himself. On this point, the Bible gives no uncertain sound. “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that NOT OF YOURSELVES: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). “NOT BY WORKS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS WHICH WE HAVE DONE, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost” (Titus 3:5) [Caps mine, MRC]. Our faith, our conversion, and our eternal life are not the product of any of our natural abilities. Man must be saved by One outside of himself so that he cannot brag about his salvation.

Spiritual salvation is not of our desire, nor of our desert, but it is of the sovereign, free, distinguishing grace of God. We are saved because God the Father chose us to salvation. We are redeemed because God the Son shed His blood to make an atonement for our sins. We are regenerated by the Holy Spirit who applies the cleansing blood of Christ to our souls. Only the love and mercy of God keeps us out of Hell. “Salvation is of the LORD” (Jonah 2:9). Therefore, all glory belongs to God. To ascribe any part of salvation to the will and work of man is as blasphemous as foolish.

If man could somehow save himself, then there was no need for God to choose a people to be saved by Christ (II Thessalonians 2:13). If self-salvation was possible, then there was no need for Jesus Christ to suffer and die for sinners. If a person could redeem himself unto God, there would be no need for the Holy Spirit to regenerate sinners. If man could be his own savior, then he could walk around on the golden streets of Heaven, boasting that his might and merit brought him to this blissful abode. Man would thus become his own idol and God would be robbed of His glory in man’s salvation. This can never be. The Bible says: “His glory is great in thy salvation” (Psalm 21:5).

THERE ARE MANY SAVING NAMES

There are among men many names that pretend to be saving names, but in reality they are physicians of no value. Two thousand years before Christ, the Babylonian priests told the citizens of their country that if they would submit to dipping in water that they would become regenerate. This Babylonian Mysticism spread over much of the ancient world, and it finally infiltrated the irregular churches after the apostolic age. Baptismal regeneration was the great evil of the Dark Ages. These corrupt churches believed so strongly in the magical power of water that they started baptizing babies in order to save them. As the centuries passed, the Great Whore gave birth to little harlot daughters, but each of these still held that baptism saves or helps to save. Throughout most of Christendom, baptismal regeneration claims to be a saving name, but the Bible says in I Peter 3:21 that baptism does not put away “the filth of the flesh” which is sin. Water on the outside can never cleanse the soul, which is on the inside.

Good works claim to be a saving name. Some practice penance and self-denial. They give alms to the poor and say long prayers. They engage in all sorts of community service. They are good to visit the sick and people in prisons. They give huge sums of money to charitable organizations. Some even make long pilgrimages and afflict their own bodies. The reason they do all these things is to save their own souls. These people insist on doing something and paying something. Like the Babel builders in Genesis II, they expect to work their way to Heaven. They forget that salvation is “without money and without price” (Isaiah 55:1). The water of life must be taken “freely” (Revelation 22:17).

Socialism claims to be a saving name. It caters to the wants of men in material matters by government handouts. The pride of the human intellect is set on the throne, and man becomes his own god. Social progress is put in the place of spiritual change, which alone can produce the fruits of righteousness. Socialists trifle with the awful realities of sin and exalt the material above the spiritual interests of men. Socialism causes men to become so involved in building an earthly paradise that they forget all about the heavenly paradise. History has demonstrated that socialism does not save men from either spiritual or material want. This abominable Christ substitute dishonors the gospel of free grace. Sad to say, but most of the world has gone after this saving name.

The gospel of Arminianism professes to be a saving name. They say if a man will exercise his free will to embrace the simple gospel of easy-believeism, he can by that act put God under obligation to save him. After this great decision, there is some need to persevere in holiness, but this is not necessary, seeing one is eternally secure in Christ no matter how he lives. These people have no place for repentance or Holy Spirit conviction. They preach a savior from Hell, but not from sin. Actually, they preach a salvation in sin and not from sin. This is another gospel, and no saving name!

ONLY ONE SAVING NAME

A name stands for a person, and includes whatever rights may belong to him (Acts 3:6,16). When Peter says in my text there is salvation in no other name, he means there is no one who can save but Jesus Christ. The names of priests and patriarchs cannot save. The names of ministers and missionaries cannot save. The name of Christian cannot save, for some have a name to live who are in truth dead. The name of the Virgin Mary cannot save. The name of Jesus is the only saving name. It is by His blood and righteousness that men are saved. Christ has no rivals or equals in this work. He has no competition, for He alone can save poor lost sinners.

The religion of Christ is intolerant when it comes to the way of salvation: “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” To those in other religions, it says there is salvation only in Christ. Being a Jew, or Mohammedan, or pagan, or humanist, or evolutionist is not enough. Christianity stands upon its own rights and gives error its just due. All the gods of the heathens and of civilized nations are born of Hell and lead to Hell. The Christian religion is from Heaven, not of men.

Often we hear someone ask, “What about dying infants? Are they conscious sinners? Do all that die in infancy go to Heaven to be with Jesus?” I do not know that the Bible gives a clear-cut answer to these questions. Some say all dying infants are caught away to dwell in the Third Heaven and to be forever with Christ. Most would say these are regenerated at death or shortly after death. Others would disagree. They would say that only elect infants who die are saved by Christ. I shall not enter into this debate. But I will go far enough to say that no infant is saved apart from the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ. I have Scripture on this: “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.”

Still another would inquire, “What about the heathens? They have never heard about Christ. Will any of them be saved without the gospel?” Some would answer these questions by saying that sincere heathens will be saved without the gospel. Others would strongly disagree and say that without the gospel, none will be saved. I shall not enter into this controversy either. But I will tell you plainly that there is no salvation for the heathen except through the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ. No barbarian or baby can enter Heaven without the salvation which is in Christ Jesus!

Religious leaders today want to put something along with Christ for salvation. They will put their own name with Christ’s, or they will put the Virgin Mary and Christ together, or they will put the preacher and Christ, or feelings and Christ. Still others would put the ordinances and Christ, or the mourners bench and Christ, or the decision card and Christ, or the church and Christ. But Christ will not share His saving work with any of these. There is salvation only in one name, the name of Jesus. It is so necessary that we stand in living relations of faith and love with Him Whose name “is above every name” (Philippians 2:9).

The name of Jesus is the only saving name under Heaven or in Heaven. Among the elect angels of Heaven, there is found no saving name. They are friends to the saints. They are our guardians against evil spirits. They take us to Heaven at the time of our death, but they are not our saviors. In Heaven, or on earth, there is only one saving name. Well did the psalmist ask: “Whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside Thee” (Psalm 73:25). Who else possesses one-ness with the Father, supreme glory, and Divine perfections?

The God of Heaven resolved in His purpose and decree, in His council and covenant, upon the salvation of His people. He appointed His only begotten Son to be their salvation. “For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ” (I Thessalonians 5:9). God the Father made no plans to save them some other way. If men are not saved by Christ, they shall die in their sins and suffer eternal torment. Peter was uncompromising on this point in the text, and we must be uncompromising too.

There is salvation in the name of Jesus. There is no higher name than Jesus Christ, the glorified Son of God. There is no abler name than that of Him Who saves to the uttermost. No surer name than that of Him Who has been given for that purpose. No sweeter name than that of Him Who is not ashamed to call men brethren. No easier name than that which asks only faith to be exercised in it. Christ is the only saving name, and all who are saved must be saved through His name.

SALVATION ORIGINATED WITH GOD

Notice the words: “None other name under heaven given.” The word “given” implies that salvation had its origin in God. A Savior for man was provided by God. The Prophet Isaiah declared: “… unto us a Son is given” (Isaiah 9:6). Again he said: “I will … give thee for a covenant of the people” (Isaiah 49:8). The Savior Himself said: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).

This is why Christ is called the “unspeakable gift” of God in II Corinthians 9:15. Man had no claim on God. He could not compel God to send Christ to die for sinners. The gift might have been withheld, and God’s throne would have been spotless. The selection of Christ to be the Savior, the sending of Him into the world, and all the benefits resulting from His redemptive work, are all an undeserved gift to man. This gift is so unspeakably great that no language can express it, no pen can tell of it, and no heart can fully conceive it. We can only be thankful for the greatness of the gift.

FOR MEN UNDER HEAVEN

Look at the words: “None other name under heaven given AMONG MEN …” “Among men” is not simply “to men,” as the objects of the favor, but among them, with reference to its diffusion. No other means of salvation has been made known and diffused among men by God’s authority. Those who preach salvation in some other person or thing are not sent from God. They are to the lost souls of men as wells without water, clouds without rain, and withered trees, twice dead, plucked up by the roots. They are peddlers of “filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6); they are “vain talkers and deceivers” (Titus 1:10) “Who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre’s sake” (Titus 1:11).

This salvation by Christ is given among men who stand in need of it. This salvation is given to men who live on earth and under Heaven. There is no salvation to be obtained in Heaven; it must be obtained on earth before a man dies in his sins. The word of this salvation by Christ is sent to men who are ready to perish - to men who can be saved only by the name of Christ - to men who, without Christ, have no hope. All the prophets preached salvation by the name of Christ: “To Him give all the prophets witness, that through His name whosoever believeth in Him shall receive remission of sins” (Acts 10:43). Christ taught the people no less: “I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am He, ye shall die in your sins” (John 8:24). The Apostle Paul preached the same doctrine: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house” (Acts 16:31).

CONCLUSION

1. My text insists upon the exclusive claims of Christ to be the only Savior of sinners. He, and He only, has put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself, and rose again from the dead to consummate the work of salvation for His people. Salvation is only and entirely by faith in the atoning work of our Lord Jesus Christ.

2. It is not a question of whether or not there is good in other religions. It is a question of the one divinely appointed way of salvation. Men must be saved by Christ or be everlastingly lost. Any who reject salvation by Christ do so at great peril to their soul. “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.”

3. Christ has saved millions already who are now in Heaven with Him. Millions more now living on earth have been saved by Him. If so many have been saved by Him, why not you? If bloodthirsty Saul could be saved, then there is hope for the chiefest of sinners. Why not be among them that name the name of Christ in order to realize your own salvation by Him?

IV. PREPARE TO MEET THY GOD

“Therefore thus will I do unto thee, O Israel: and because I will do this unto thee, prepare to meet thy God, O Israel” (Amos 4:12).

The preceding verses reveal the sore judgments that God had sent upon Israel to correct their backslidings. Five times the Lord had sent corrective chastisement, but they had not returned unto God in repentance and confession. These judgments were designed by the Lord to produce in them humiliation and reformation, but there was no sign of amendment of life.

It seems to me that “prepare to meet thy God” is a military phrase. God is saying I challenge you to meet Me in battle. I will attack you immediately in full force. I am soon to come forth to contend with you. Put on what armor you have. Throw yourself in the posture of defense, call upon your idols for aid. See how your gods will avail you against the Sovereign of the universe. If I am against you, who can be for you? Since there is no way to flee from My presence, then take your stand against Me. Prepare to meet Me as a combatant. I warn you now that you may prepare for the conflict. The frivolous age to which we belong needs this inspired injunction: “Prepare to meet thy God.” How truly solemn are those words! How deserving of our serious and prayerful consideration! What eternal consequences are at stake! I want to deduce from these

words some things which pertain to our everlasting peace.

MAN MUST MEET GOD

First, God often meets men in His providential visitations. Israel had just met God in His judgments upon their land which were designed to bring them to repentance and recovery. The Lord had deprived them of proper food (v. 6) and needed rainfall (v. 7). Some places had too much rain, others had none (v. 8). The Lord had sent disease and insects upon their crops (v. 9). God had even allowed the enemies of Israel to invade, to spoil, and to kill them. Nevertheless, they continued in their sins. They refused to repent and to return to their God.

Strange providence often brings man into a personal interview with God. Has someone died in your family? Have you lost your job? Has sickness visited your home lately? Has some unusual event come to pass in your life? Does it seem that the very forces of nature are arrayed against you? Does it appear that everything that you do tends to turn out wrong? These things are the voice of God in providence. He wants you to realize that He is in control of the world. He wants you to consider your ways. He wants you to prepare to meet Him. So take these visitations from God as a solemn warning to you.

Second, all men must meet God in death. Death is God’s officer. He acts under His immediate authority and control: “… unto God the Lord belong the issues from death” (Psalm 68:20). It is an officer of God that no money can bribe, no influence thwart, no skill evade, no power resist. He has met men since the beginning of time in a variety of forms and circumstances. He met Pharaoh and his chariots in the Red Sea. He met Uriah in battle. He met Belshazzar at his banquet. He met James at the point of a sword. He meets some in a wreck on the highway. He meets some when they least expect him.

God has definitely determined that all men shall die: “For as in Adam all die” (I Corinthians 15:22). “… death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Romans 5:12). “O wicked man, thou shalt surely die” (Ezekiel 33:8). “All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again” (Ecclesiastes 3:20). “What man is he that liveth, and shall not see death? shall he deliver his soul from the hand of the grave? Selah” (Psalm 89:48).

A meeting with God in the hour of death cannot be evaded! We have only once to die and the day is fixed. If you die wrong the first time, you cannot come back from the dead to be converted and die a believer. You have but once to die. It behooves you to find Christ precious to your soul before death finds you! O “prepare to meet thy God”!

Death is the results of a Divine appointment: “For I know that thou wilt bring me to death, and to the house appointed for all living” (Job 30:23). Death is not the results of blind chance, or some debt we owe to nature. It cannot be accounted for by the mere principles of physiology. God could make a man’s heart beat for eternity as easily as He does for seventy years. Death is no more the result of the laws of nature than the electric chair or a bullet from a pistol. It is in all cases the results of intelligent appointment made by God the Giver of life.

At death, the spirit returns to God and the body goes to the grave (Ecclesiastes 12:7). The grave is a house appointed for all living, a narrow, cold, deep, dark, ill-furnished residence. In this common place the rich and the poor meet. The king and the peasant meet. The young and the old come together. They all lie down in a narrow bed. There the body must lie until the resurrection.

In death, the soul meets God, either prepared or unprepared. Because death is certain, men must make proper preparation for it. We cannot come back from the spirit-land to repair the evils of a misspent life. Whatever is done with reference to death must be done once for all.

Third, man must meet God in the day of judgment: “And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27). Not after this purgatory. Not after this the cessation of man’s being. No, no, a thousand times no. “After this the judgment.” No further opportunity to hear the gospel and believe it. “After this the judgment.” As death leaves you, so judgment finds you: “He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still” (Revelation 22:11). “… and if the tree fall toward the south, or toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be” (Ecclesiastes 11:3). If you die unsaved, you will be so in the judgment.

There are two periods of judgment for those who die. The first is immediately after death when the soul passes into the eternal world. This is the one in Hebrews 9:27, and the one hinted at in

Ecclesiastes 12:7. When the soul goes to meet God at His judgment bar, his destiny will be made known to him. The soul of an unsaved man will be dragged by the angel into the presence of God unsaved, unpardoned, unsanctified, and unfinished for Heaven. Therefore he must bear the just sentence of His law, the irrevocable curse of God, and his fate of eternal banishment from God. This judgment which comes immediately after death may not be formal and public. But as a result of that interview with God, he will be made either miserable or happy until the final judgment.

There is a future and final judgment that will be public and formal: “And I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works” (Revelation 20:11-12). The Judge will appear, the tribunal will be fixed, the books will be opened, and all the unsaved will give an account of themselves to God. This judgment introduces one into a state unchangeable and eternal.

No man knows the exact time of the day of judgment. Therefore, you need to prepare to meet God at the judgment. When you stand before the Judge of all the earth, it is too late to prepare for it. The path up to the judgment seat is not a way of preparation. It is too late to prepare for it. It is too late to prepare for war when the enemy invades. A man may put off preparation until it is too late in many areas. A man may neglect his health until it is too late. A student may neglect his studies until it is too late. A farmer may neglect his crop until it is too late to reap his harvest. It is easy to put off from childhood to youth, from manhood to old age, until it is too late. Beyond your interview with God at the judgment bar, there is no preparation.

PREPARATION IS NEEDED

To render these meetings with God safe and happy, preparation is indispensable. First, regeneration is needed because of human depravity. Our Savior said: “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). Because of the fall on the human race in Adam, every man possesses a nature totally averse to God and His moral law. He is the enemy of God (James 4:4) and enmity against God (Romans 8:7). Regeneration is necessary to man’s understanding spiritual things and performing spiritual deeds. Nothing less than a “regeneration” (Titus 3:5) of the soul will suffice. Man must become “a new creature” (II Corinthians 5:17) so that “old things” pass away and “all things” become new. The sinner must be given “a new heart” and “a new spirit” (Ezekiel 36:26). He must have his mind renewed (Romans 12:2) by a creative act of the Holy Spirit. Without spiritual regeneration, no man can ever be prepared to meet God.

Second, repentance is needed to meet God safely. Little is being said about repentance today; little is known about it by most religious folks. Repentance is a change of mind which leads to a change of conduct. A man repents because he has experienced a work of grace upon his soul: “… turn thou me, and I shall be turned; for Thou art the LORD my God” (Jeremiah 31:18). The heart by nature is an “impenitent heart” (Romans 2:5). When God, in regeneration, gives man a new heart (Jeremiah 24:7), it quickly becomes “a broken and contrite heart” (Psalm 51:17; cf. 34:18; Isaiah 57:15; 61:1; 66:2). This new heart is broken because it sees itself an awful sinner before God: “Surely after that I was turned, I repented; and after that I was instructed, I smote upon my thigh: I was ashamed, yea, even confounded, because I did bear the reproach of my youth” (Jeremiah 31:19). True repentance involves consideration: “He answered and said, I will not: but afterward he repented, and went” (Matthew 21:29). The original word means to reconsider, to change one’s mind, to abandon past opinions after due consideration. This is seen in the case of the prodigal son in the words “when he came to himself” (Luke 15:17).

Bible repentance involves convictions of sins committed against God: “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest” (Psalm 51:4). The sinner sees himself unlike God and in rebellion to Him. He is not merely alarmed that sin brings punishment, but he is disturbed because he knows sin offends God. This is followed by contrition, or “godly sorrow,” which “worketh repentance to salvation” (II Corinthians 7:10). Then comes confession of sin to God: “For I will declare mine iniquity; I will be sorry for my sin” (Psalm 38:18). “Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight …” (Luke 15:21). This confession of sin leads to the forsaking of sin: “He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy” (Proverbs 28:13). He turns to God and away from sin. This is real repentance.

Third, saving faith is needed in order to be prepared to meet God. The Lord not only requires repentance toward Himself, but “faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 20:21). Repentance precedes faith, and it is always put before faith in the New Testament. Christ said: “For John came unto you in the way of righteousness, and ye believed him not: but the publicans and the harlots believed him: and ye, when ye had seen it, repented not afterward, that ye might believe him” (Matthew 21:32).

Faith is not a leap into the dark; it is no blind act of the soul. True faith involves knowledge: “And they that know Thy name will put their trust in Thee …” (Psalm 9:10). Such a thing as believing with the heart without the head is out of the question. A man may believe with his head without believing with his heart and be a nominal believer, but he cannot believe with his heart without believing with his head, too. Faith is believing a thing because God said it is so: “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Romans 10:17).

Faith involves not only knowledge, but also assent. There must be knowledge that Jesus Christ is able to save and there must also be an assent of the heart to all His claims upon the soul. Those who, receiving Christ to be all He claimed to be, believe in Him: “But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name” (John 1:12).

Saving faith is an assent of the mind which conveys a surrender of the heart and affections. Philip told the eunuch: “If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest” (Acts 8:37). “For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness” (Romans 10:10). This surrender to the Lordship of Christ involves perseverance: “… let him trust in the name of the Lord, and stay upon his God” (Isaiah 50:10). “Believe in the LORD your God, so shall ye be established” (II Chronicles 20:20). The psalmist wrote: “My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed: I will sing and give praise” (Psalm 57:7). Any faith, which does not surrender the heart and affections to Christ, is the faith of demons (James 2:17-20).

Christ is the only refuge from the wrath to come. There is no pardon, or peace, or acceptance, but by and through faith in His blood. Christ is an atoning sacrifice “through faith in His blood” (Romans 3:25). We are saved by faith: “For by grace are ye saved through faith …” (Ephesians 2:8). We are justified by faith: “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1). We are adopted by faith: “For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:26). We are sanctified by faith. In Acts 26:18, Christ spoke of “them which are sanctified by faith that is in Me.” We are kept saved by faith in Christ: “Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (I Peter 1:5). Indeed, our whole salvation from start to finish involves faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

THE ADMONITION OF THE TEXT

My friend, please consider the admonition of my text: “Prepare to meet they God.” A form of godliness is scarcely the preparation needed. Do not form a religion of your own. Do not depend on any foundation except the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ. Do not attempt to mingle human effort with the pure waters of saving grace. Repent and believe the gospel. Renounce the Devil and all saviors but the Divine Savior, God’s only begotten Son. It behooves every sinner to earnestly prepare to meet his God. Let this be your first and chief concern. Exert your most vigorous powers in preparing for this interview with God. Let it occupy your chief attention. Agonize to enter the strait gate. Count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus the Lord. Give all diligence to make your calling and election sure. Know that you are of the truth.

Preparation to meet God demands your immediate attention: “Boast not thyself of tomorrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth” (Proverbs 27:1). Satan seeks to devour your soul. Death approaches. The judgment awaits. Eternity is near. Remember that you are an accountable creature. Then “prepare to meet thy God.” “And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30).

My text is addressed to all ages and all ranks. It applies to young men: “Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth …” (Ecclesiastes 12:1). It speaks to those in middle age. It is a command to those who have gray hair and hoary heads. Presidents, popes, and prime ministers need to prepare to meet God. The rich, the learned, and the great men must make this preparation. The poor, the illiterate and the wretched are not exempt. You are each and all to be concerned. The text belongs to every one of you. Oh, “prepare to meet thy God.”

Don’t live as if there is no God, no death, no Heaven, no Hell, no judgment. Don’t ignore God’s authority over you. Don’t close your eyes to His mighty works in the earth. This is exceedingly foolish. It will produce dreadful consequence. Be awakened to your condition and be alarmed because death approaches. O “prepare to meet thy God.”

Those who reject the gospel must be prepared to meet God as their offended Judge and Adversary. You dare to contend with the sovereign Disposer of winds and waves, the Creator of the mountains and the moon, the Lord over death and destruction! You dare to meet as a combatant the Master of the world, who can turn the morning of hopeful success into the darkness of misery and despair, who is able to tread down the high and the mighty of the earth and to put all enemies under His feet! You are the biggest fool this side of Hell to think you can strive with your Maker!

Before long, you will stand before Him as a disembodied spirit. You cannot deny or excuse your sins. You cannot withstand nor escape His righteous vengeance. How can a poor worm of the dust contend with the omnipotent, omniscient, and everlasting Commander of the armies of Heaven? If you would prepare to meet God with comfort and ease, you must meet Him now in Christ Jesus, who came to bleed and die for sinners. You must meet him by faith at the Mercy Seat.

Careless soul, why do you linger?

Rejecting the gospel of God’s Son?

Hear you not the command?

O prepare to meet thy God.

Why so thoughtless are you standing

While the fleeting years go by,

And your life is spent in folly?

O prepare to meet thy God.

Hear you not the earnest pleadings

Of your friends who wish you well?

And perhaps before tomorrow

You’ll be called to meet your God.

Careless soul, O heed the warning

For your life will soon be gone;

O how sad to face the judgment,

Unprepared to meet thy God.

(With apologies to J.F. Haley, whose words I took the liberty to change a bit.)

V. THE GATE TO GLORY

“And Jacob went out from Beersheba, and went toward Haran. And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and he took of the stones of that place, and put them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. And, behold, the LORD stood above it, and said, I am the LORD God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed; And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of” (Genesis 28:10-15).

Jacob had fled from his father’s home in Beersheba to escape the wrath of his brother Esau. His brother had vowed to murder him because he had stolen the blessing belonging to the firstborn by a dirty trick, which he and his mother had contrived. Rebekah had urged Jacob to flee to her brother’s house in Haran until Esau’s wrath had subsided.

His journey to Laban’s would cover more than 400 miles. In the account in my text, I see that he stopped for an evening rest on the west side of the Jordan in the vicinity of Luz, about 50 miles north of Beersheba. Retracing the steps of Abraham, he is traveling without any armed servants to protect him from beasts and bandits. He is alone in a strange and dangerous land without a caravan to sustain him, or even a tent to sleep in. As he lay there upon his stone-pillar, he gazed up into the violent sky, blazing with thousands of stars. No doubt his head was full of doubts and fears about the past, the present, and the future.

THE LADDER AND ITS IDENTITY

While he slept, he experienced a theophany in the form of a dream. God appeared to him that night in a most remarkable manner. He saw a staircase to Heaven on which angels ascended and descended. This ladder reached from the sleeper’s side to the far-off Heaven above. The Lord God Himself stood at the top of the staircase. The familiar ancestral promise was repeated to Jacob and the blessing and the birthright were confirmed. In addition, God’s presence and protection was promised him in his wanderings. This was a night Jacob would never forget as long as he lived.

When he awoke from his dream, he exclaimed: “Surely the LORD is in this place; and I knew it not … How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of Heaven” (Genesis 28:16-17). The patriarch had seen with the eyes of the flesh the gate to glory!

Jacob’s vision was meant to teach him a great lesson about the Seed in which all nations would be blessed. The very heart of Christ’s work was unveiled in this vision. That ladder which Jacob saw which reached from earth to Heaven was a type of Jesus Christ. Alluding to Jacob’s ladder, Christ said: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man” (John 1:51). The patriarch’s fleeting vision was a transient revelation of a permanent reality.

Jesus Christ is the Ladder between God and man, the staircase from earth to Heaven. Through Christ, we have access to the Father. By the Redeemer, the angels of God continually ascend and descend for the good of the saints. Jesus Christ alone is the means of communication between God and man. Without Him, there is no communication. All who dare to come any other way are thieves and robbers.

THE PARALLEL BETWEEN CHRIST AND THE LADDER

First, a ladder is something conceived and constructed by human wisdom with the design of reaching something. Even so, redemption by Christ is a presentation of “the wisdom of God” (I Corinthians 1:24). God the Father sent forth His Son into human history to accomplish His most glorious design. Christ came to magnify the Father’s name and to save His elect. “But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons” (Galatians 4:4-5).

Second, a ladder is a means to accomplish a purpose without which means the desired purpose cannot be accomplished. Jesus Christ is the only way and means which God has appointed to bring us to Heaven. Jesus Christ died as our Head and Representative. It was “for us” that God “delivered Him up” (Romans 8:32). The Father “made Him to be sin for us” (II Corinthians 5:21). Christ “obtained eternal redemption for us” (Hebrews 9:12). Today, He is at the Father’s right hand making intercession “for us” (Romans 8:34).

It is by Christ’s righteousness alone we are justified before God. His obedience to the law is our title to eternal life. He bore the Hell pangs for us that we might be delivered from everlasting wrath and condemnation. Jesus Christ is the gate to glory. Acts 4:12 declares: “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” No other person, be he preacher, priest, or pope, can open to us the way of eternal life. No other righteousness, be it ceremonial or actual, can reserve for us a seat in Heaven. It is by Jesus Christ alone we must be saved, if saved at all. All who are not saved by Him will be everlastingly damned to Hell.

Third, a ladder must be long enough to reach the thing desired. Jesus Christ in His two natures reaches from earth to Heaven. In His Divine nature, we see the top of the ladder reaching to Heaven. In His human nature, we see the foot of the ladder, which stands, on earth. The foot of the ladder is no lower than the earth. If it were, it would suggest Christ came to save the damned in Hell. If it were higher than earth, it would signify Christ came to save the angels. “For verily He took not on Him the nature of angels; but he took on Him the seed of Abraham” (Hebrews 2:16).

Fourth, a ladder must be strong enough to support those who would climb up it. Jesus Christ, our spiritual ladder, is Almighty God. He is co-equal, co-essential, and co-eternal with the Father. As God the Mighty, He is able to bear all our sins and sicknesses. Isaiah 63:1 tells us Christ is “mighty to save.”

Fifth, a ladder has rounds, or steps, to go up. Jesus Christ in working out our salvation did so by steps. He worked like a man going up a ladder. He agreed to redeem a people in eternity past, and in time he did so step by step. First, he came into the world from Heaven by fixing his foot in our nature upon the earth. He lived a holy life in conformity to God’s law. He died at Calvary to satisfy Divine justice. He ascended up into Heaven and now is seated at the right hand of the Majesty on High, pleading the merits of His efficacious blood.

Sixth, a ladder is a narrow way to go up to your desired destination. Jesus Christ, the way to the Father, is a narrow way, yet He is broad enough for all believers in Christ. Many don’t want to go this narrow way because Christ will not allow them the liberty they want and take to themselves. It is a narrow way in contrast to the broad way that leads to destruction. Jesus Himself declared: “Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it” (Matthew 7:13-14).

THE WRONG WAY

The builders of Babel sought to get to Heaven by a tower, whose top would “reach into Heaven” (Genesis 11:4). Likewise, in our day, the members of mystery Babylon have sought other ways to Heaven than by Jesus Christ. All who seek to go to Heaven except on the merits of the blood of Jesus Christ are blind Babel-builders who will be confounded.

Various Babel-builders of this generation do all kinds of good works in order to get to Heaven by their own merits. Some of them give much money to charities and say long prayers like the Pharisees did. Some make long pilgrimages to certain religious centers and torment their bodies, hoping to save their own souls. Others practice penance and self-denial. Still others believe if they die in battle for their country, they will go to Heaven. Some even believe that they will be saved because they belong to some club or lodge. Not one of these things, or all of them Together, can open up the gate to glory.

It is wrong to work for salvation, for good works do not save. “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). Titus 3:5 reads: “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost.” In the Bible, we are commanded to work out our salvation “with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12), but never are we told to work for salvation. Salvation must be in our souls before we can work it out. We work for God because we are going to Heaven, not in order to go to Heaven. It is not by performing good works that men go to Heaven. Rather, it is by receiving the finished work of Christ (Romans 4:4). Jesus Christ is the only gate to glory!

RELIGION NOT THE WAY

There are a lot of sincere and honest people who are trying to go to Heaven by their religion. But it is a great and grievous error to confuse religion with regeneration. You cannot go to Heaven on your religion. No religion, Protestant, Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Mohammedan, or otherwise, can save your soul. You can be a Baptist, a Methodist, a Presbyterian, an Episcopalian, a Campbellite, or anything else, and still die in your sins and go to Hell. Salvation is not in the church, but in the person and work of Jesus Christ. If you are going to glory, then you must go by the gate, Jesus Christ. He alone can save you from sin (Matthew 1:21).

Nicodemus was a very religious man, but Jesus Christ told him: “Ye must be born again” (John 3:7). Saul of Tarsus was a Pharisee of Pharisees, but he counted all his religion as a garbage dump in comparison to the saving knowledge of Christ (Philippians 3:7-9). Judas Iscariot was a baptized apostle in the New Testament church, yet he was “a devil” (John 6:70) and went to perdition (John 17:12). This all proves that one’s position in some religious order is no guarantee of a seat in Heaven.

Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount: “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? And in thy name have cast out devils? And in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity” (Matthew 7:21-23). How shocking and solemn are these words from the One Who cannot lie! Many persons will die deceived about their soul! They will miss Heaven as far as Hell is from Heaven!

At the judgment on the great day, some who professed to cast out devils will be found to have been possessed by devils. Some who claim to know Christ will be unknown by Christ. Some who claim to do “many wonderful works” will be discovered to be workers of iniquity. Some who professed to prophesy in Christ’s name will be seen to have prophesied in their own name. It is plain from the words of Christ here that neither religion, nor religious exercises, can take one to Heaven. Christ is the only gate to glory.

There are people who seek to enter Heaven by what they call sacraments or ordinances of the church, namely baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Ordinances have never saved anyone, and they never will or can. The ordinances of Christianity have no more saving power than the ordinances of Judaism. The ordinances of Judaism could not put away man’s sins. “For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins” (Hebrews 10:4). The officiating priest in the temple could not forgive the sins of Israel: “And every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins” (Hebrews 10:11). Even so, no minister, or any of the works he may do for you can take away your sins. Christ only can forgive sins on earth (Mark 2:10). Paul told the Gentiles at Antioch: “… through this man (Jesus Christ) is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins” (Acts 13:38).

Judas and Simon Magus went to Hell although they were baptized. Surely this proves that baptism is not the way to Heaven. Furthermore, the thief on the cross went to Paradise without either baptism or the Lord’s Supper. If one could go to Heaven without the sacraments, then all could, for baptism and the Lord’s Supper do not save a person. If one had only to be baptized in water by some gospel preacher to go to Heaven, then the preacher who baptized such a person would be that person’s savior, not Jesus Christ. The Scripture teaches that you ought to be baptized because you are saved, not in order to be saved. Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone is the only gate to glory.

MORALITY NOT A SAVIOR

A large number of people expect to go from earth to Heaven on their morality. They compare themselves with others, and they have a fair show in the flesh. They see that they are not as mean as their neighbors and friends. They pay their honest debts and try to treat their fellow man right. But wait a minute! How do you measure up to God’s standards? God demands and deserves perfection: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). He requires absolute holiness such as He possesses “Be ye holy; for I am holy” (I Peter 1:16). Are you perfect, nothing wanting? Are you as holy as God is? If so, you must be God yourself. On the other hand, if you are not perfect or as good as God is, then you are not good enough to go to Heaven to live with God!

Do you really do the best you can? Is it not a fact that you could improve in some points? Would you really want your relatives and friends to know the thoughts that go through your mind at times? Do you really measure up to God’s standards? Do you actually dare to stand before a God Who hates all forms of sin? Verily, I venture to say that you are not all you could be, or even want to be. The Bible says that the very best you have, God will not accept. Isaiah 64:6 declares that “all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags” in God’s sight. If your self-righteousness looks like filthy rags, what do you think your sins look like?

The Bible contains the true sayings of God. The Scripture of truth declares that no one is good enough to go to Heaven. “There is a generation that are pure in their own eyes, and yet is not washed from their filthiness” (Proverbs 30:12). “For there is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not” (Ecclesiastes 7:20). “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one” (Romans 3:10). Romans 3:23 declares: “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” We have all sinned; we are all “guilty before God” (Romans 3:19).

If a person could go to Heaven by a clean, upright life, then there was no need for Christ to die to save sinners. If a man could lift himself up to God by his own bootstraps, then why does the Bible say that Christ is the only way to Heaven? My friend, there is no morality outside of Jesus Christ, the only gate to glory.

THE LAW CANNOT SAVE US

There are those who contend you can only go to Heaven and escape Hell if you keep the Ten Commandments. That all men should strive to keep the Ten Commandments, I freely concede. But that the mere keeping of the commandments can take a person to Heaven, I flatly deny. “But … no man is justified by the law in the sight of God” (Galatians 3:11). “I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain” (Galatians 2:21). If a man could be saved by mere external obedience to the commandments, then Calvary was a silly, stupid blunder on the part of God.

You do not keep all the Ten Commandments. Jesus asked: “Did not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you keepeth the law?” (John 7:19). At some time or another, you have broken at least one of the commandments. The nature of the law is such that if you break one of the least commandments, you are guilty of being a law-breaker, rather than a law-keeper (James 2:10). You know that you have many times broken God’s laws. Then you are a transgressor of the law and you are condemned by the law.

The law was not given to save men, but to make them see themselves as sinners and in need of a Savior. Paul said: “… by the law is the knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20). Again he wrote: “I had not known sin, but by the law” (Romans 7:7). Christ is the only gate to glory!

CHRIST AND CHRIST ALONE

Luke 19:10 informs us Christ came “to seek and to save that which was lost.” Then we can be certain that no man is able to seek God on his own and to go to Heaven. John 3:17 reveals that God sent His Son into the world “that the world through Him might be saved.” This proves there was no other way by which the world could be saved. I Peter 3:18 declares Christ suffered for our sins “that He might bring us to God.” Therefore, it is evident that there was no other way we could bring ourselves to God. This is why Christ says: “Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else” (Isaiah 45:22). Christ is the only gate to glory!

Christ is the only way to Heaven. While on earth, He said: “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me” (John 14:6). Jesus Christ is the way, not the way-shower! If there is any other way such as baptism, law keeping, morality, or works, then Jesus Christ lied. Jesus is saying in John 14:6, the way to Heaven is through my mediation and atonement. I am the only gate to glory. Jesus Christ’s blood and righteousness is the only gate to glory! You must come that way or miss Heaven!

VI. GRACE ABOUNDING TO THE CHIEFEST OF SINNERS

“This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief” (I Timothy 1:15).

The Divine Spirit demonstrates the art of condescension in this text. The sum and substance of the whole gospel is here in a nutshell. Before us in this single verse is one precious drop of essence, distilled from gardens full of fragrant flowers. The true depth of this wonderful text has never been exhausted. It is an ever-gushing fountain of the pure waters of Heaven.

I urge you to look closely as we read from this great, glorious, gracious text. This one verse has been used by the Spirit to bring many to the Saviour. It is my prayer that God the Holy Spirit will use it to bring salvation to some poor, struggling, judgment-bound soul who lingers on this side of eternity.

THE PROVERB – “THIS IS A FAITHFUL SAYING”

There are five of these sayings in the pastoral epistles of Paul (I Timothy 1:15; 3:1; 4:9; II Timothy 2:11, Titus 3:8). Each of them precedes an important truth. “This is a faithful saying” speaks of the certainty and worth of what is about to be said. What Paul is about to utter is one of “the true sayings of God,” a thing most surely believed by all true Christians. It was something Paul believed with all his heart. If he were uncertain of himself, how could he expect others to believe it?

This proverb is worthy of credit because God who says it is always faithful to His Word. There is not one bit of error in the forthcoming statement of Paul. It was a certainty never to be doubted or disputed. The apostle was fully persuaded of its true fulness because it was attested by miracles. It had proved its power upon his own heart on the Damascus road. This saying was an everyday truth to the apostle to the Gentiles.

The word “faithful” here reveals that the gospel of grace displays the faithfulness of God in His nature and attributes. It reveals how Christ was faithful in fulfilling His covenant engagements with the Father. The gospel demonstrates the faithfulness of Christ in keeping the law and making it honorable. In it, we see the faithfulness of God’s Word in His fulfilling His promise of a Savior. Throughout the world, faithful ministers preach this faithful saying faithfully.

THE PROPOSAL – “WORTHY OF ALL ACCEPTATION”

This faithful saying commands our attention. It is good news, worthy of being received by all sorts of persons; yet not too good to be true, for it is a true saying. The gospel of Christ is worthy of being welcomed by all men and by the whole of each man. It is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes. Those who hear it must believe it to be the very truth. They must appropriate it to themselves. This must be done for it is worthy of all acceptation.

The gospel of Christ is worthy of being received by the understanding to which it brings truth. It is deserving of reception by the will to which it brings the freedom of submission. It ought to be received by the affections to which it brings perfect love. Thank God for the gospel of His saving grace! For hope, it brings a certainty to gaze upon. For passions, it gives a curb; for effort, a spur and a power. The gospel of Jesus Christ gives desired satisfaction and the whole man healing and light.

Men are unworthy of the blessing of the gospel, but the gospel is worthy of the acceptation of all men. Not all men will accept it, for millions die in unbelief. The important question is: Have you received the Christ of the gospel? Are there any reasons why you should not receive the saving message? Are there any reasons why you have not? II Corinthians 6:2 says: “Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” To reject the Christ of the gospel is an awful sin. Jesus Christ said: “He that rejecteth Me, and receiveth not My words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day” (John 12:48).

THE PERSON – “CHRIST JESUS”

Let us meditate on the double name of the Saviour. The word “Christ” means “anointed of God.” The One here referred to is no mere man. He is the One the angel Gabriel called “the Son of the Highest” and “the Son of God” (Luke 1:32,35). There is none other than “Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God is with us” (Matthew 1:23). In this name, we are to see the “Wonderful”, “Counsellor”, “God the Mighty”, the Father of Eternity, and “The Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6). This is “the Alpha and the Omega” (Revelation 1:8), “the Ancient of Days” (Daniel 7:22), “the Beginning of the Creation of God” (Revelation 3:14). He is “the Rose of Sharon”, “the Lily of the Valley” (Song of Songs 2:1), “the Chiefest among ten thousand” (Song of Songs 5:10), the One Who “is altogether lovely” (Song of Songs 5:16). He is “the Bright and Morning Star” (Revelation 22:16), the “Star out of Jacob” (Numbers 24:17), “the Day-Spring from on High” (Luke 1:78), “the Sun of Righteousness” (Malachi 4:2).

The first part of the double name speaks of Christ as the preincarnate Son of God. It suggests His Divine appointment and preparation in the Covenant of Grace before the world was. It declares Christ to be the One to whom prophets and rituals witnessed, the One men looked for wearily through the ages. The One Who was equal with God, was with God, was in the form of God, and was God from eternity past.

Now look at the second part of His name. It is “Jesus.” This means savior or deliverer. This name tells us of the child born in Bethlehem as “the Son of man”. In the name “Christ”, we see a Son given, and in the name “Jesus”, a child born (Isaiah 9:6). Our Lord was commonly called “Jesus of Nazareth.” In Luke 2:11, the angel of the Lord said to the shepherds abiding in the fields: “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.” This verse shows how fitting the name Jesus is since He came to be our Saviour. We read again in Matthew 1:21: “And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call His name JESUS; for He shall save His people from their sins.”

Men need to hear about Jesus Christ the Saviour of sinners. Tell them not of politicians, physicians, preachers, priests, popes, professors, and potentates. Tell them of Christ and him crucified. Oh, that we could realize the need of doing this more each day of our life.

One of the last visitors to the great missionary, William Carey, was Elder Alexander Duff, who talked with him of his past life, and then knelt down and prayed by his bedside. Leaving the room, Brother Duff thought he heard himself recalled. He turned back, and the dying man addressed him in a whisper, “Mr. Duff, you have been talking about Doctor Carey, Doctor Carey; when I am gone, say nothing about Doctor Carey - speak about Doctor Carey’s Saviour.”

THE PLACE - “CAME INTO THE WORLD”

The expression, “came into the world,” implies His pre-existence with the Father. Indeed, if “Christ Jesus came into the world,” then He was before He came. His own will impelled His feet and brought Him to earth. While on earth, He testified: “I proceeded forth and came from God” (John 8:42; 16:27; 17:8,25). He was the Son of man which came down from Heaven (John 3:13).

I preach that God incarnate came to this planet. Christ left the bosom of the Father to come to the bosom of a woman. He left the fellowship of saints to come to the filth of sinners. He forsook the adoration of the elect angels to come to the antagonism of the evil angels. He departed the celestial city to come into a terrestrial city. He cast off the form of God that he might be made in the form of a man.

The Saviour came to mix and mingle with sinners. The Creator came among His creatures. The world He came to was not only the enemy of God, but it was enmity against God. Christ left a life of glory and took upon Himself manhood in order to deliver His people from danger, disease, and death. Such condescension is beyond our comprehension. It was the love and tender mercy of the Father which sent Christ to be the Savior of His elect, not the goodness of men.

Christ Jesus came into the world by His lowly birth as a man. Philippians 2:7-8 reveals that He “took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” Romans 1:3 declares that He “was made of the seed of David according to the flesh.” Galatians 4:4 informs us: “But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman.” Hebrews 2:14 declares: “Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same.” Then verse 17 of this same chapter says: “Wherefore in all things it behoved Him to be made like unto His brethren.”

Jesus Christ came as the Son of man to mingle with the sons of men. He went with the masses during His earthly ministry, and His delights were with the sons of men. Of Him, John said: “Which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of Life” (I John 1:1). Peter declared: We “were eye witnesses of His majesty.” Yes, the Son of God lived among men about thirty-three years.

Christ came into the world as the eternal Word. He is the Revealer of the Godhead. Only a Being Who is God could come forth from the bosom of the Father to interpret and to reveal the hidden Godhead. In the Bible, we read of “Christ, who is the image of God” (II Corinthians 4:4). He is also called “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15) and “the express image of His person” (Hebrews 1:3). In the coming of Christ into the world, the essence of God is made clear; in Christ the revelation of God’s character is seen.

What if Christ had not come into the world? We would have never known the real character of God. All the promises given by God of a coming Saviour would have been broken. Then, worst of all, the world would still be looking in vain for a Saviour, and you and I would be without “hope and without God in the world.”

THE PURPOSE – “TO SAVE”

The Redeemer came into the world, being sent of the Father, but not against His will. He came voluntarily in the fulness of time to this sin-cursed earth to be ill-treated by His own nation. He came not on a sight-seeing trip. He came to save all sorts of sinners. He came to make an atonement for His people. He Himself said: “Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28). He came to lay down His life for the sheep (John 10:11,17).

Christ repeatedly called attention to his mission into the world. He said in Luke 5:32: “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” Then, in Chapter 9, verse 56, He declared: “For the Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.” In chapter 19, verse 10, He remarked: “For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.” In John’s Gospel, chapter 12, verse 47, He said: “I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.” He again said: “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).

The Father sent His Son to save those He had chosen to grace and glory. “For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved” (John 3:17). “God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons” (Galatians 4:4-5). The Apostle John wrote: “And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world” (I John 4:14).

Some miss the mark in regard to the mission of Christ into the world. They say that He came to be our example, to show us how to obey the law and to be saved. This false idea did not originate in Heaven, but in Hell. The Holy Spirit never put such a dogma in the minds of men. This erroneous notion was hatched up in Hell, and it is preached by “the enemies of the cross of Christ.”

He Who preached the greatest sermons ever delivered did not come into the world primarily to preach. He Who gave sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, and speech to the dumb did not come primarily to heal. He Who exercised power over death, disease, and demon did not come into the world just to demonstrate His power to frail man. He Whose lofty ideals and principles radiated from a sinless heart and a flawless character did not come into the world only to establish an example for conduct. He Who organized His church and decreed that the gates of Hades should never overcome it did not just come into the world to organize an institution which would have perpetual existence. He Whose fidelity in life and courage in death will forever be incomparable, did not come into the world merely to teach men to live honestly and to die bravely. These attributes, however commendable and worthy, are insufficient to tell the motive which moved Him from realms celestial to regions terrestrial.

In the life of Jesus Christ, there was one momentous accomplishment that surmounts all others. What is it? Spirit-prompted, Heaven-sent, faithfully recorded, the text says: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.”

As a preacher, Christ excelled; as a teacher He predominated; as a philosopher He was unequaled; as a man He was unsurpassed. Yet His prime glory lies in none of these virtues. We dare not minimize the effects of His code of ethics in elevating society. We dare not slight His ability to inspire us to planes of holy principles and hallowed conduct. We dare not belittle His philosophy of love toward God and fellow man that would give us a blessed world to live in. We dare not ignore the perfect pattern of His life, exciting men to strive for all that is noble and good. But more important than all these is His coming to bear our sins that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him (II Corinthians 5:21).

How wonderful is the expression that Christ came to save. It implies that the gospel I preach brings effectual deliverance. He came to save sinners, not try to save them. Not to half save them. Not to make them savable. Not to help them save themselves. Not to save them because they kept the law. But to save them wholly and effectually from their sins by His atoning blood. He will not fail in the saving of so much as one soul which was given to Him in the Covenant of Redemption.

THE PEOPLE - “SINNERS”

The Son of God was called the “friend of publicans and sinners” (Matthew 11:19). He came to save and help those who could not save and help themselves. Jesus Christ witnessed to sinners, ate with them, healed them, slept with them, taught them, prayed for them, and died for them. As the Head of the church, He has commissioned His churches to preach the gospel of peace to lost sinners. He is in Heaven at the right hand of God, pleading for sinners.

Paul went on to say “of whom I am chief.” What a statement! This is the man who said “touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless” (Philippians 3:6). Now he says he is the chiefest of sinners. Paul in his unconverted state was a blasphemer, a persecutor, and injurious person. He breathed out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord. By receiving the gospel of grace, Paul has become the chiefest of pardoned sinners. The chiefest of sinners was made to become the chiefest of saints, for Paul was not a whit behind the chiefest of the apostles (II Corinthians 11:5).

CONCLUSION

Our text teaches the evil of sin. The proof of the fatal effect of sin is seen in what God had to do to stop it. The wound of the fall in Adam was not a small, superficial cut, for it took the pierced hand and bruised head of Jesus Christ to heal it. Measure the intensity of the danger of sin by the cost of deliverance. Judge how grave are the wounds for healing of which stripes had to be laid on Him! The Saviour died for our sins so sin would not destroy us. Like the Apostle Paul, I can say Christ saved a Hell-deserving sinner like me. Millions of others in ages past and living at present would gladly join chorus with Paul. My experience cannot be your certitude. But if you are suffering from the same disease that I once had - the disease of sin, then let me tell you of the cure that I experienced. Jesus Christ can and does save sinners. He saved me. Why can’t He save you?

There has never been one who claimed Christ as Saviour and was disappointed. No one has ever called the gospel a sham who really believed it with all his heart. There is no one who can say, “I asked Christ to forgive me and He has not. I ask Him to cleanse me and He has not.” This can never be, for Christ says: “Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out” (John 6:37).

Perhaps you are saying, “I know all this is true, but I can do nothing.” Yes, I know, you think that there is a missing link. The gospel does ask sinners to do what they cannot do. Our Lord’s words are emphatically true: “Without Me ye can do nothing.” Yet again the Bible says: “For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.” Believe this until it perfumes all your thoughts and makes you rejoice even though you are without strength, seeing the Lord Jesus has become your strength and your salvation. If you will believe this truth, your faith will save you and you can go in peace.

Will you not believe a saying so sure? Will you not accept a truth so gladsome? Will you not come to a Saviour so suitable? Remember that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. If you are a sinner, be assured that Christ came to save you.

VII. THE BROKEN-HEARTED SINNER

“Praise ye the LORD: for it is good to sing praises unto our God; for it is pleasant; and praise is comely. The LORD doth build up Jerusalem: he gathereth together the outcasts of Israel. He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds” (Psalm 147:1-3).

The primary reference in my text is to the Israelites who had been crushed and broken in their long captivity (Psalm 137:1-4). The Lord had given them comfort by allowing them to return to their native land. Thus Jehovah had healed their broken hearts and bound up their wounds as a nation.

The language in a general sense describes what Christ does for the broken-hearted sinner. Two things are outstanding in verse 3: The patient is the broken-hearted sinner, and the physician is Jesus Christ.

THE DEFINITION OF IT

Just what is a broken-hearted sinner, anyway? A broken heart is a heart overwhelmed with great grief of spirit. As the psalmist said: “My spirit was overwhelmed” (Psalm 77:3). King Solomon wrote: “… but by sorrow of the heart the spirit is broken” (Proverbs 15:13). But a broken-hearted sinner is more than a man broken in health, or broken in wealth, or even broken in love. I have known some broken in all of these who were not of what my text speaks. The one I refer to is a man whose heart is broken because of his sins against the Lord his God. Heartbreak is a tragic episode in human experience - the woe of woes, the distress of distresses. The sufferings of the soul is the soul of suffering (Proverbs 17:22).

In this message, I am not merely concerned with a broken heart, but with a broken-hearted sinner. I mean a person who is brokenhearted because he knows he is an awful sinner before God. He is so broken up until bitter tears stream from his eyes because he has sinned against Heaven. Mary Magdalene was such a sinner when she washed Christ’s feet with her tears (Luke 7:44). The psalmist described this bitter experience by saying: “The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell gat hold upon me: I found trouble and sorrow” (Psalm 116:3).

Such a sinner feels shame and sorrow as he looks over his past life of sin and wickedness. Daniel said: “We have sinned, and have committed iniquity, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled, even by departing from thy precepts and from thy judgments” (Daniel 9:5). Ezra expressed it in these words: “O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to thee, my God: for our iniquities are increased over our head, and our trespass is grown up unto the heavens” (Ezra 9:6).

The sinner’s heart is broken at the sight of his own ingratitude for the kindness and goodness of God, which he has abused and ignored. Seeing “the earth is full of the goodness of the LORD” (Psalm 33:5), he realizes in the main he has despised “the riches of His goodness” (Romans 2:4). God has given him air to breathe, water to drink, food to eat, a roof over his head, a bed to sleep in at night, but he has not glorified God nor been thankful for His material blessings.

His heart is wounded because in times past, he has despised and slighted the very gospel by which he must be saved. The gospel says repent or perish (Luke 13:3), but his “impenitent heart” (Romans 2:5) has treasured up wrath against the day of wrath. The gospel “is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth” (Romans 1:16), but he has never believed it with all his heart. The gospel of grace presents Christ as the One “altogether lovely” (Song of Songs 5:16), but heretofore he has seen no beauty in Christ that he should desire Him (Isaiah 53:2).

Another thing, which pricks the sinner’s heart, is the love of the Redeemer for his soul. He sees that Christ made “His soul an offering for sin” (Isaiah 53:10), although he has lived for years with no concern for the salvation of his own soul. How his heart melts like wax before the advancing sun when he realizes that Christ loved him with an everlasting love and died for him while he was yet a sinner (Romans 5:8)! How could Christ love such an unlovable wretch? How could He love such an ungodly being who had nothing but hatred for the Savior? Such love passes human knowledge. It is higher than Heaven and broader than the sea.

But the thing which breaks the sinner’s heart most of all is Calvary. The sight of a crucified Christ fills his soul with anguish of spirit. What a clear picture of this is seen in the Book of Zechariah as he speaks concerning the future conversion of Israel at the Second Coming of Christ. “And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon Me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for Him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for Him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn” (Zechariah 12:10).

All of us sinners have pierced Christ, for “He was wounded for our transgressions” (Isaiah 53:5). From this text, we learn that the genuine sorrow of a penitent soul flows from a believing sight of a pierced Savior. Such a view of Christ crucified will cause a sinner to mourn for his sins after a godly sort. He is grieved because Christ, innocent and holy, was nailed to the tree to suffer for his sins.

When the awakened sinner contemplates this amazing scene, he weeps, he mourns over his sins which crucified Christ. Often he is made to cry out such things as: “Woe is me! for I am undone” (Isaiah 6:5). “Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Luke 5:8). “God be merciful to me a sinner” (Luke 18:13). “O wretched man that I am!” (Romans 7:24).

Such a broken-hearted sinner cannot long endure this wounded spirit. He must get free of that sight which afflicts his soul with grief and trouble. Hearing the powerful preaching of John the Baptist about sin and the judgment, “the people asked him, saying, What shall we do then?” (Luke 3:10). The men who heard Peter preach on Pentecost “were pricked in their heart” and cried out, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?” (Acts 2:37). When Saul, the persecutor of the church, saw the heavenly vision of Christ on the Damascus road, he exclaimed: “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” (Acts 9:6). The convicted jailer at Philippi said: “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” (Acts 16:30).

THE PERSON OF IT

The person in the Godhead who actually breaks the sinner’s heart is the blessed Holy Spirit. In Zechariah 12:10, the Jews mourn over a pierced Messiah because God has poured “the Spirit of grace” upon them. When the Spirit is poured out on a sinner, he will mourn over his sins, which killed the Prince of Life. This broken-hearted condition is a fruit of the work of the Spirit and an evidence of regenerating grace in the soul.

Jesus Christ declared of the Holy Spirit in John 16:8: “And when He is come, He will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.” Mark carefully penned the words: “He will reprove the world of sin,” or better from the Greek, “He will convince the world of sin.” The Holy Spirit convinces unbelievers that they are sinners and must be saved by Christ. Only the Spirit can break the sinner’s hard heart and lay open to him the deep wounds of his sins. The Spirit does this that the glory of that which is done may be ascribed to the freeness and sovereignty of grace.

THE MEANS OF IT

First, the Holy Spirit uses the moral law of God as an instrument: “But if ye have respect to persons, ye commit sin, and are convinced of the law as transgressors” (James 2:9). “I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet” (Romans 7:7). “Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20).

The moral law of God was given to show men that they are sinners before God. It stops their mouth and makes them guilty before God. The Spirit applies its commandments and prohibitions to awaken the conscience and to produce accusing thoughts. By the declaration of punishment and rewards for its transgressor and observer, it brings before the eyes of men the dreadful evil of sin. It breaks the heart of sinners to hear the sentence of the law: “You have sinned and you shall be damned.”

Second, the Spirit uses the written word of God: “Is not My word like as a fire? saith the LORD; and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?” (Jeremiah 23:29). The unhumbled heart of a sinner is like a rock, senseless, stubborn, and inflexible on which no spiritual impression can be made (Zechariah 7:12). The Spirit uses the Word of God to break such a hard heart. By a knowledge of sin, the soul is sore broken into true repentance of sin. Now the Word is only an instrument; it is not the efficient cause of this. As a hammer, it is passive and can do nothing of itself. But in the hands of the Holy Spirit, it strikes like a mighty hammer against a rock, and it will break the hardest heart in pieces and make a stony heart a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26; Acts 11:20-21; II Corinthians 10:4-5).

Third, the Spirit uses the gospel preached in a New Testament church: “But if all prophesy, and there come in one that believeth not, or one unlearned, he is convinced of all, he is judged of all: And thus are the secrets of his heart made manifest; and so falling down on his face he will worship God, and report that God is in you of a truth” (I Corinthians 14:24-25). Here we see how an unbeliever attends a church service, hears the gospel preached in the power of the Holy Spirit, and is saved.

Prophesying in these verses is to preach the gospel. It means that the spiritual state and spiritual needs of a man and the merciful provision of pardon through Jesus Christ has been declared. The

Spirit of God works powerfully upon this unsaved man to show him the evil of his own heart. This unbeliever sees the depravity of his own heart and is filled with mental anxiety, distress, and alarm. The conscience-stricken sinner realizes his guilt and danger and his need of a Divine Deliverer. He is convicted and convinced by the message of truth that he has heard in the services of the church.

This broken-hearted sinner under the influence of the Holy Spirit and the power of the gospel, falls down before the whole congregation, ashamed of his sins and errors, unable to look God or men in the face. His hatred to God and His truth is utterly vanquished. His enmity is exchanged for reverence and worship. He acknowledges the Divine presence in the church. Here in the meeting of God’s people, he has met the God of his salvation, and this assembly has become to him the house of God and the gate to Heaven (Genesis 28:17).

It is the office of the moral law to break up the soul and then for the gospel to heal the broken-hearted sinner. Quoting Isaiah 61:1, Jesus Christ said: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He hath sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised” (Luke 4:18).

The heart that is truly humble under a sense of guilt and dread of wrath by the law is given the gospel of Christ to bind up his wounds. Penitential contrition is followed by gospel conversion. While the sinner is prostrate at God’s footstool, seeking His mercy and resting on the finished work of Christ, God heals his broken heart. The gospel removes all guilt from the wounded spirit and implants the riches of His grace in Christ.

THE BLESSINGS OF IT

First, a broken heart makes us acceptable and well-pleasing to God: “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit” (Psalm 51:17). The primary design of the sacrifices under the law was that a man under a sense of sin and mindful of his inability to make a satisfaction for his sins, would empty himself before God and rely only on the coming propitiatory sacrifice of Christ. The right way to bring a sacrifice to God is to renounce your works and worth, come as a broken earthen vessel, and present the Savior’s merits to God for acceptance. Such a sacrifice will not be refused or rejected by God.

Second, it makes up for the defects in our services and duties: “A broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise” (Psalm 51:17). Men despise something which is broken, but not so with God. He looks for and seeks after a broken-hearted sinner. There is no worth in the matter of contrition over sin in itself, strictly speaking. But contrition expels all conceit of self-worth, and so a man is fit to receive grace and free pardon from God. A broken heart is acceptable to God only through Christ. There is no true repentance without faith in the Savior.

Third, it makes the soul a fit receptacle for God to dwell in: “For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones” (Isaiah 57:15). God dwells in the highest Heaven where time is unknown, but He also dwells in the lowest heart and inhabits sincerity as surely as He inhabits eternity (Psalm 138:6). God comes to such a heart to impart spiritual life and comfort. He comes to give joys and hopes sufficient to counterbalance all the griefs and fears that bruise and break a man’s spirit.

Fourth, a wounded spirit brings God near us: “The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart …” (Psalm 34:18). Then contrite heart thinks God is far off in the Third Heaven. Nevertheless, in truth, God is very near him, but his eyes are holden so that he sees not God’s loving presence. The Lord delights in being near brokenhearted sinners; He wants them always near Him and under His eye. He will never withdraw Himself from them or leave them to perish in discouragement.

Fifth, a broken-hearted sinner is the kind of person that God is pleased to save: “The LORD … saveth such as be of a contrite spirit” (Psalm 34:18). The person humbled under a sense of sin, melted down in true repentance, is blessed of God with salvation. How wonderful to have a repentant, mourning heart! Salvation is linked with contrition. When the sinner condemns himself, God saves him by His amazing grace.

Sixth, a contrite heart gets God’s attention: “Thus saith the LORD, The heaven is My throne, and the earth is My footstool: where is the house that ye build unto Me? and where is the place of My rest? For all those things hath Mine hand made, and all those things have been, saith the LORD: but to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at My word” (Isaiah 66:1-2). A heart broken over sins is a temple of God - a Heaven and earth of His own making. He looks with favor to the poor in spirit, humble and serious, self-abasing and self-denying, whose heart is truly contrite for sin, penitent for it and in pain to get it pardoned. Such a heart is the place of God’s rest as much as His throne is Heaven!

CONCLUSION

1. Modern Arminian evangelism has no place for a broken-hearted sinner. Only the Holy Spirit can produce such a creature! Decisional regenerationists have no need for such a person, for they make their converts by bubble gum and buses. Gadgets and gimmicks have been substituted for the preaching of the gospel under the power of the Holy Spirit. Arminians have no time to wait on the Spirit to bruise and break lost sinners’ hearts. This would take too long and hinder them from having “the fastest growing church in town.”

2. Most professed Christians in this generation are not saved but deceived. Although dipped in the waters of baptism, they shall be damned. They have churchianity, but not Christianity. The Spirit of grace has not been poured out upon them. They do not know what it is to have a broken heart and a contrite spirit. They have never seen a Divinely-wrought vision of Christ crucified for their sins. Godly sorrow has not led them to true repentance and saving faith in Christ. They are still in the bond of iniquity and the gall of bitterness. They do not know the grace of God in truth (Colossians 1:6). They have never come to see that a vessel of mercy is made of clay, which is broken into the smallest part first!

3. Today most sinners are proud and profane. They desire not the knowledge of the Lord’s ways. They feel it is vain to serve God. They judge themselves unworthy of everlasting life. But, sooner or later, their hearts will break over their sins under the wrath of God. Hell is a place of broken-hearted sinners who are without hope. “But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew 8:12). All those who commit iniquity will ultimately be cast “into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 13:41-42). Sinner, flee the wrath to come! Flee to Christ for refuge from the storm of Divine wrath!

VIII. MOURNING FOR CHRIST

“And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon Me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for Him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for Him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn. In that day shall there be a great mourning in Jerusalem, as the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon. And the land shall mourn, every family apart; the family of the house of David apart, and their wives apart; the family of the house of Nathan apart, and their wives apart; The family of the house of Levi apart, and their wives apart; the family of Shimei apart, and their wives apart; All the families that remain, every family apart, and their wives apart. In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness” (Zechariah 12:10-14;13:1).

The primary meaning of this text is the conversion of the survivors of the Jewish nation at the end of the Great Tribulation when Christ comes back to earth to establish His kingdom. Those Israelites who are alive and who remain on earth when Christ comes back to the Mount of Olives will experience a great outpouring of the Holy Spirit (Ezekiel 39:29; Joel 2:28). Upon a vision of a crucified Messiah (Psalm 22:16; John 19:34) these Israelites will undergo a sweeping national conversion (Ezekiel 20:37; Jeremiah 31:31-34; Daniel 12:1; Romans 11:24; Revelation 1:7) which will prepare them for the vast blessings of the kingdom age.

But there is also seen in these words a graphic presentation of the conversion of a sinner. Here is seen evangelical sorrow for sin as the effects of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon a sinner. Some principles are laid down here, which are of universal application. I shall use this text to illustrate true conversion, for here we see the way of true repentance.

CREATED BY THE HOLY SPIRIT

There has never been any true conversion of a sinner apart from the office and work of the Holy Spirit. He is given a remarkable title in my text: “The Spirit of grace” (cf. Hebrews 10:29). This title is appropriate to one who is good and gracious. It is appropriate because He infuses grace into the sinner and brings him into a state of grace. He is the author of all grace in a saint, including repentance, faith, prayer, hope, love, fear, joy, peace, meekness, and long-suffering.

In regeneration and conversion, the Spirit of grace produces in the mind of man an experience of grace, and this experience works repentance in a man’s soul. The God of all grace must send the Spirit of grace to act upon the spirit in man. The Spirit alone can convict and convert the sinner. He alone can cause a person to think upon those things that concern his everlasting peace. Neither conscience, nor the terror of Hell, nor sweet music, nor eloquent preaching can produce conversion. “Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the LORD of hosts” (Zechariah 4:6). All genuine repentance for sin originates with God the Holy Spirit.

THE GIFT OF GRACE

Please note the words: “For I will pour out.” To “pour out” expresses the fullness and abundance of the gift of the Spirit. Christ called this “rivers of living water” (John 7:38). The verb “pour” out is used especially of pouring out of water (Exodus 4:9) and broth (Judges 6:20). When used in connection with the Spirit of grace, the word “pour” denotes abundance of refreshment, like waters poured on thirsty ground. Jehovah says in Isaiah 44:3: “I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground: I will pour My spirit upon thy seed, and My blessings upon thine offspring.”

No sinner will ever be able to understand the Gospel and repent until the Spirit is poured out on him (I Corinthians 2:14). The Lord says in Proverbs 1:23: “… I will pour out my spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you.” Spiritual life and enlightenment must precede a reception of spiritual things: “… Lydia …whose heart the Lord opened, that she attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul” (Acts 16:14). When Peter preached to the household of Cornelius “the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word” (Acts 10:44) and God granted them “repentance unto life” (Acts 11:18). The Spirit goes with the Word, and, in the matter of spiritual salvation, He works through the gospel.

ATTENDED BY PRAYER

“The Spirit of grace” is also the Spirit “of supplications.” The grace the Spirit bestows upon a sinner leads him to prayer. Here we see cause and effect, for the Spirit conveys the grace and supplication is the fruit of that condition of heart, which the Spirit creates in the believer. The Spirit moves the saint to pray and puts words in his mouth. “Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered” (Romans 8:26). When the Spirit makes a gracious movement toward the sinner to bring him to repentance and faith, that same sinner will be moved toward God in supplicating prayer.

When Christ wanted to convince Ananias that Saul of Tarsus had been truly converted, He told him: “Behold, he prayeth” (Acts 9:11). Prayer gives evidence that the Spirit has imparted an abundance of grace to a person. He who received the Spirit of adoption cries: “Abba, Father” (Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:6). Jesus taught that God’s elect “cry day and night” unto God (Luke 18:7). You might as well expect to find a living man without breath as a living saint without prayer! If prayerless, then graceless!

Perhaps there is a little more in the word “supplications” than we might first imagine. The soul cries out for more grace, having already received grace. This would establish the truth that God gives us grace to receive a larger measure of grace. Since the word “supplications” is in the plural, it would suggest that the whole of the Christian life consists of one supplication after another. “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11).

CAUSED BY LOOKING TO JESUS

The words, “they shall look upon Me,” are very important. The speaker is Jehovah. The word “look” is not a mere passing look. It means to behold with confidence and faith in the object gazed upon (Isaiah 22:11; 51:1). This particular word in the Hebrew means “to regard,” “to consider,” “to contemplate,” and “to look upon with pleasure.” This same verb “look unto” is employed of the Israelites, who bitten by a serpent, looked unto the serpent of bronze and lived (Numbers 21:9). In the same way and with the same results, the sinner is to look to Christ, Who was pierced at Calvary, and live.

A suffering Messiah was not unknown in Zechariah’s time (Psalm 22:16; Isaiah 53:1-12; Daniel 9:26; Zechariah 13:7). The verb “pierced” (Hebrews dagar) means “to pierce” or “thrust through with a spear or a lance” (Zechariah 13:3). This points to the sufferings of Christ when “one of the soldiers with a spear pierced His side” (John 19:34).

It was our sins which caused Christ to suffer. Note the words, “whom they pierced.” “Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures” (I Corinthians 15:3). In a sense, it may be said of all for whom He died: “Ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain” (Acts 2:23; 5:30). In Heaven, a first-degree murder charge is against us all. The question, “Guilty” or “not guilty,” must be put to each person separately, and each must make his own plea. I cannot speak for others, but I can speak for myself. I freely confess that my sins nailed Him to the tree and caused His body to give up the Spirit.

MOURNING AFTER CHRIST

Jehovah says: “And they shall mourn for Him.” “For Him” is the third person, not the first person “for Me” as we might expect. The words, “they shall look unto Me,” set forth the essential oneness of the pierced One with Jehovah. The sudden transition in the same verse from first person to the third, “they shall mourn for Him,” shows us that this person is distinct from God. The Messiah here prophesied to appear would be both God and man. He would be a Divine person called Jehovah Who speaks in this text and pours out His Spirit on man, and yet He would be a man to be pierced. This could only be said of the God-man.

The word “mourn” means “a deep and intense mourning,” namely, “as one mourneth for his only son.” It is like parental agony (Genesis 22:2; Isaiah 47:9; Jeremiah 6:26; Amos 8:10). Here we see that the sinner mourns, not at the mourner’s bench, but at the cross. One look at Christ crucified for our sins will make mourners out of us all. Such “godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of” (II Corinthians 7:10). We weep not so much for His suffering, but for our sins which murdered Christ (Isaiah 53:4-6). We mourn because we entered into the sin of Calvary, and we repeated the crime of the cross.

Some years ago, some took this scriptural truth concerning the sinner mourning after Christ too far. They invented a mourner’s bench of which the Scripture knows nothing, and they put that between the sinner and his Savior. This was wrong. Today, we have gone to the other extremes. Now we have decisional regeneration with no place for the outpouring of the Spirit, which causes the sinner to mourn for Christ. This is equally wrong. The Bible plainly teaches the sinner does mourn over his sins, which crucified Christ in my text.

True repentance is attended with mourning for Christ. Any repentance, which does not include sorrow for sin, is a mere pretense. Any repentance, which has no tear in its eye and no mourning for Christ in the heart, was not produced by the Spirit of grace. Even when Christ is revealed as Savior by the Spirit and pardon is enjoyed, mourning for Christ does not cease, for this is a life-long experience of a true believer.

Years ago, George Atkins, the Baptist hymn writer, penned these words:

Brethren, we have met to worship

And adore the Lord our God;

Will you pray with all your power,

While we try to preach the Word?

All is vain unless the Spirit

Of the Holy One comes down.

Will you help the trembling mourners

Who are struggling hard with sin?

Tell them all about the Savior,

Tell them that He will be found.

BITTERNESS IS PRODUCED

“They shall be in bitterness for Him.” The first result of looking upon the Lamb slain for our sins is bitter repentance. We are in bitterness because we have not seen His preciousness before - in bitterness because we have slighted His love so long - in bitterness because of our present unworthiness and sinfulness before Him. We fear we may never be forgiven by God for putting His spotless Son to grief. There is immense grief of soul because of a sense that we can never forgive ourselves. This bitterness of soul makes sin tasteless, amusements less attractive, and Christ so pleasant and sweet to the soul. At this moment the means of grace are prized as never before.

In genuine conversion, the Holy Spirit creates in the penitent sinner a holy hatred for sin and a carefulness to avoid it. Psalm 97:10 says: “Ye that love the LORD, hate evil.”

William Cowper puts it so very well:

I am no preacher, let this hint suffice

The cross once seen is death to every vice;

Else He that hung there suffered all His pain,

Bled, groaned, and agonized, and died, in vain.

Most church members today are false professors. They are strangers to the work of the Spirit of grace upon their hearts. They have never mourned because their sins crucified Christ. They are destitute of any real hatred for sin. They have no desire to serve Christ or to attend the services of His church. Thousands of such people will perish because they know not “the grace of God in truth” (Colossians 1:6).

May the Spirit be pleased to use this message to awaken lost church members from the slumber of false security. May the Lord sweep away your refuges of lies and destroy your delusive hopes. May the sovereign grace of God bring you humble, penitent, and contrite to Christ as your only refuge and hope!

A PERSONAL MATTER

Conversion is a personal matter. Each individual sinner must mourn over his sins, which crucified Christ. Note the number of times the word “apart” is used in Zechariah 12:12 “And the land shall mourn, every family apart.” Then it speaks of each family and says: “Their wives apart.” Husband and wife are one flesh, but when their hearts are made flesh by the Spirit of God, each one mourns alone. So it is that each individual must see his own sins and come to know he is exposed to endless ruin. Each person under Holy Spirit conviction will desire to be alone with God. Some will be silent, others will cry aloud, but all will mourn in some fashion. Why is this so? Because when the Holy Spirit gets hold of a man, He will lead that soul apart to solitary wrestling with God and acts of personal humbling before Him.

Sinner, never forget your own individuality and responsibility to God. Romans 14:12 says: “So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God.” One day you will die apart and be sentenced apart from all other mortals on earth. You must mourn yourself over your own sins and transgressions. No one else can do it for you. Conversion is a personal matter. You must have Christ for yourself, or you are lost without any hope.

CLEANSING FROM SIN

Heaven be praised that God does not leave a sinner in this great bitterness of soul. The Spirit leads him on to the cleansing of his sins. Zechariah 13:1 says: “In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness.” The allusion here is to the rites practiced in the consecration of the Levites who were to have “water of sin” and “water of uncleanness” used for purposes of legal purification (Numbers 8:7; 19:9). The reference here is really to the cleansing of the soul by the blood of Christ (I Peter 1:2; I John 1:7; Revelation 1:5). God takes away sin by the piercing of Jesus Christ by the sword of Divine Justice.

“In that day” means when the Spirit of grace is poured out that moves the sinner to mourn over his sin that crucified Christ. It is only when the Spirit is poured out in great abundance that the sinner sees the virtue and value of the shed blood of Christ. This fountain of Christ’s blood is said here to be “opened,” not sealed up. This means the fountain is opened to all who have the Spirit poured out on them and who mourn for Christ. Sin is a terrible thing. Nothing can remove its stain upon the soul but the atoning blood of Christ.

Again, William Cowper has written:

There is a fountain filled with blood

Drawn from Immanuel’s veins;

And sinners, plunged beneath that flood,

Lose all their guilty stains.

The dying thief rejoiced to see

That fountain in his day;

And there may I, though vile as he,

Wash all my sins away.

E’er since by faith I saw the stream

Thy flowing wounds supply,

Redeeming love has been my theme,

And shall be till I die.

When this poor lisping, stammering tongue

Lies silent in the grave,

Then in a nobler, sweeter song,

I’ll sing Thy power to save.

CONCLUSION

1. How we need to pray for the Spirit to be poured out on sinners that they may repent and be converted. This is preeminently the work of the Holy Spirit. The means of grace apart from the Spirit of grace can never renew the heart nor inspire in a soul dead in sins a principle of spiritual life. Paul may plant and Apollos water, but it is God Who must give the increase.

2. The change which the Spirit makes in a sinner is a great change. It reaches the deep springs of feeling in the soul. It slays the enmity of the carnal mind and causes the soul to look upon a pierced Redeemer. This moves the convicted sinner to repent of his sins, which killed the Prince of Life. Such a permanent change is wrought upon the soul that the person will go down to his grave in grief over that fact that his sins crucified the Lord of glory.

3. The worst thing God can do to any sinner is to withdraw the influence of the Holy Spirit from Him. This leaves the soul in spiritual insensibility and deadness. The mind of such a man is sealed against any saving truth. He is indifferent to his duty and danger. Death and eternity are lost sight of amid the delusion of time and the fleeting things of earth. Such a person is fitted to destruction.

4. Repentance and faith are the fruits of a sight of Christ crucified. Then let us preach Christ and Him crucified. Paul said; “For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified” (I Corinthians 2:2). The Spirit is pleased to use the message of a crucified Christ more than any other (Acts 2:23, 37).

5. Has the Spirit been poured out on you? Do you see that your sins crucified Christ? Do you mourn over your wretched condition? Then go to the fountain opened for sin and uncleanness and be clean every whit. Confess your past sins and resolve to be obedient to Christ in time to come.

IX. WHAT HAPPENS IN SALVATION

“For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put Him to an open shame” (Hebrews 6:4-6).

It goes without saying that this is one of the most difficult and controversial passages in the entire Bible. Students of the Inspired Word and theologians have made these verses a fierce battleground. The main question which arises is this: Are the people in Hebrews 6:4-6 saved or lost? Arminians are quick to assert these people had been saved, but they had then fallen from grace. Calvinists declare these Hebrews had made an outward profession of faith, but they had never been born again.

Which of these two views is correct? In my humble opinion, neither honestly interprets these verses. I must reject the Arminian view, since the Bible nowhere teaches a child of God can lose his salvation. If Hebrews 6:4-6 teaches falling from grace as they claim, then it teaches too much for the Arminian system. Arminians invite people who have lost their salvation by sinful acts to be saved again. However, the writer of Hebrews says it is “impossible” for those who fall away to be saved again. This verse teaches that if it were possible for a man to lose his salvation, he would be forever lost. The word “impossible” as used in the Bible does not mean something difficult, but something absolutely impossible (Matthew 19:26; Mark 10:27; Luke 18:27; Hebrews 6:18; 10:4; 11:6).

On the other hand, I must reject the Calvinistic interpretation also. I cannot bring myself to believe these are false professors. For if this meaning is so, the passage teaches it is impossible for such false professors to be saved. Calvinists will not deny that God’s marvelous grace has many times saved false professors and religious hypocrites. I do not believe we should teach that all lost church members are beyond the reach of Divine grace. Furthermore, in what sense can such false professors be said to crucify Christ afresh, especially since Christ did not die for the sins of the non-elect? The five things said of the people in Hebrews 6:4-6 can only be true of real born-again people. A false professor has not been spiritually enlightened nor made a partaker of the Holy Spirit.

The writer of the Book of Hebrews is not writing to false professors, but to born-again Hebrew Christians (Hebrews 3:1; 4:15-16). The purpose of this Epistle is to prevent Hebrew Christians from wavering in their profession of faith and returning to Judaism. The people addressed had been saved a long time and had grown but little in grace (Hebrews 5:12). Instead of going forward, they had fallen behind in their work for Christ, hence the injunction in Hebrews 6:1: “Let us go on to perfection.” The writer was persuaded that these Christians could do some “better things” (Hebrews 6:9).

The writer of this Epistle sought to show them that while a genuine disciple may fall into a state of inactivity for a time, it is impossible for him to permanently stay backslidden. This would show them the utter absurdity of backsliding. In Hebrews 6:4-6, we have a hypothetical case which shows if it were possible for a person to completely apostatize, he could apostatize but once. He would have no second opportunity to be saved. The Apostle says such is “impossible” for those whom the Son of God ransomed with His blood cannot completely apostatize.

Consider the five things said of these people in my text: (1) They were enlightened; (2) They had tasted the heavenly gift; (3) They were partakers of the Holy Spirit; (4) They had tasted the good Word of God; (5) They had tasted the powers of the Millennial Age to come. These things can only be said of true believers. Here is set forth five things, which a believer receives in salvation. If this is not the meaning, then language means nothing, and we cannot understand anything in the Word of God. I believe I have given the true meaning and will devote the rest of my message to elaborating on this fivefold description of what God does for the sinner in salvation.

“WERE ONCE ENLIGHTENED”

What does the word “enlightened” mean? It comes from a Greek word (PHOTIZO) which means to “make to see.” It is translated twice enlightened (Ephesians 1:18; Hebrews 6:4) and once as illuminated (Hebrews 10:32). In all cases, it is strictly applied to a born-again person. An unregenerated man cannot see spiritual truth (I Corinthians 2:14). Jesus told Nicodemus: “Except a man be born again, he cannot see …” (John 3:3).

To be “once enlightened” is to be once for all brought into the light and endowed with spiritual vision. This means that such a man has been enlightened by the Holy Spirit through the Word. It is to see impurity of your heart and actions, to see your inability to perform good, to see your imperfect righteousness before God. An enlightened person is brought to see his lost estate by nature and to see Christ as his only Savior.

The first effect of the Spirit’s moving in the new creation, as in the old creation (Genesis 1:3), is light (II Corinthians 4:6). Ephesians 1:17-19 declares: “That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him: The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of His calling, and what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, And what is the exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of His mighty power.”

The problem with fallen man is that his spiritual understanding is darkened by sin (Ephesians 4:18). His spiritual perceptions are dead; He cannot know spiritual things (I Corinthians 2:14). Apart from the working of the mighty power of God, man would die in unbelief cursing God to his last breath. But when efficacious grace works upon him, he can know his heavenly calling and the riches of the glory of his inheritance. This is all due to the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, which gives him the knowledge of Christ. In regeneration, the Holy Spirit once for all time enlightened the blinded sinner to see the worth of spiritual things.

How pleasant to “call to remembrance the former days” in which we “were illuminated” by the Spirit of Christ (Hebrews 10:32). Thank God for the day of my spiritual enlightenment! Oh, happy day! When God breathed life into my soul and caused Divine light to spring up in my mind! At first, this light brought me great pain when I discovered my undone condition before a righteous God whose law I had broken. At that moment, the sorrow of death compassed me, the pains of Hell got hold upon me, and I found trouble and sorrow (Psalm 116:3). In this time of darkness and despair, my weeping eyes beheld Christ as the Light of the World. By faith, I received Him as my Saviour.

“TASTED THE HEAVENLY GIFT”

The word “taste” (Greek GENOMAI) means “to experience, to understand, to eat” (John 8:52; Hebrews 2:9; I Peter 2:3). The heavenly gift is Jesus Christ, God’s unspeakable Gift (II Corinthians 9:15). The word “gift” is in the singular number, which limits it to one special gift. God’s special gift to the world is His Son: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son” (John 3:16). “My Father giveth you the true bread from heaven” (John 6:32). Jesus Christ called Himself “the gift of God” (John 4:10). He is the heavenly gift for He also said: “I came down from heaven” (John 6:38).

Man had no claim upon God. He could in no way compel God to provide a way of redemption. The whole scheme of salvation - the election of a people to inherit the glory world, the selection of a Redeemer, the sending of Him into the world, and all the benefits and blessings resulting from His saving work, are all an undeserved gift to man. No tongue can tell, no heart can fully conceive, no pen can adequately describe the unspeakable greatness of the heavenly Gift. We can only render thanks to God for sending a Saviour. Heaven be praised because “God sent forth His Son” (Galatians 4:4).

God was under no obligation to provide a Redeemer. Had the heavenly Gift been withheld, God’s eternal throne would have remained spotless. No one forced Jesus Christ “to give His life a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28). Nevertheless, Christ loved His people so much he “gave Himself a ransom for all” (I Timothy 2:6). Although we deserved nothing but Hell, Christ freely “gave Himself for us” (Titus 2:14) that by his shed blood, Heaven would be our eternal home. Oh, how it thrills my soul and cheers my mind to know Christ “loved me, and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).

The gospel calls upon sinners to taste of Christ, the true food of the soul: “O taste and see that the LORD is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in Him” (Psalm 34:8). By belief in the gospel, a man is permitted to taste “the heavenly gift.” This is not merely a sip, but it is an inward experience and enjoyment to the fullest extent. “If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious” (I Peter 2:3). The sinner must make an experimental trial of Christ, for the depth of Christ’s salvation can only be understood by personally tasting “the heavenly gift.”

One day a preacher and a businessman were walking down the street talking. The businessman was selling a new product. He complained to the preacher that the greatest problem in his business was getting people to try his product. He said, “If I can only get a person to try it, they will like it and buy it from then on.” The preacher commented that this was his problem too. He said, “If I can get a person to taste the heavenly Gift, then they will feast upon Christ for eternity.”

“MADE PARTAKERS OF THE HOLY GHOST”

This cannot mean they had some movings of the Holy Spirit but never received Him. No one is a partaker of the Holy Spirit unless he has been regenerated by the Spirit. The word “partakers” (Greek METOCHOS) means “to participate or to be a part of” (I Corinthians 9:10; 10:17; Hebrews 3:1, 14; 12:8, 10; I Peter 4:13; II Peter 1:4). We partake of food when we eat it. We partake of pleasure when we enjoy it. We partake of the Holy Spirit when we are born of Him and enjoy His indwelling presence. The believer partakes of the Holy Spirit in the sense he is united to Him and this union makes Him the source of his spiritual life. This is called in Titus 3:5 “the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost.”

Some would make this refer to the special miraculous influence of the Spirit, which was common in the apostolic age. This could be, but I doubt that such a meaning was intended by the writer of the Book of Hebrews. I prefer to apply it to the regenerating work of the Spirit, which is common to all believers in every age. Ephesians 1:13 declares: “In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise.”

To partake of God’s blessings in providence is wonderful. But how marvelous indeed to be made a partaker of God’s Holy Spirit and share the Divine nature. This is a pledge and foretaste of Heaven. The new heart given in regeneration is a temple of the Holy Spirit. God reigns in this heart where the power of grace has subdued all His enemies. This heart which partakes of the Holy Spirit gives thanks and praise to God continually. This is a part of Heaven’s covenant blessings, a twig from the tree of life, a drop from the river of life, the key to mansions in the sky, a present pledge of future glory.

“HAVE TASTED THE GOOD WORD OF GOD”

This is not Jesus Christ the Living Word. He was intended before by “the heavenly gift.” Here by the Word of God I understand the Holy Scriptures which are used in conviction, conversion, and comfort. The Bible is the “good” Word because it comes to us from the good God and reveals good things. It contains good information about peace and pardon for guilty sinners. Well did the psalmist write: “How sweet are Thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth” (Psalm 119:103).

These Hebrew Christians had experienced the excellency of the Word of God. This cannot be applied to a lost sinner who sees no beauty in the Scriptures. These Hebrew Christians are said to have enjoyed the comfort of the Scriptures. A true believer loves the Bible; he makes it his business to hear the Bible taught and preached. He does not merely admire the Bible as a literary masterpiece. Instead, he delights greatly in the truths contained in the Holy Book. Again, the psalmist said: “The judgments of the LORD are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold: sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb” (Psalm 19:9-10).

The Christian could not get along without his Bible! It is his precious storehouse of inexhaustible riches. There he reads of the heavenly Father’s love and the story of redemption by Christ. There he sees a map of his travels through the wilderness and landscape of the heavenly Canaan. And when he climbs to the top of Pisgah and views the promised land, his heart begins to burn, delighted with the blessed prospect, and amazed at his rich and free salvation. But a lost sinner has no such delight in the good Word of God. He is indifferent to it, as much as a man would be to read the title deed belonging to another man’s estate.

The Christian is the world’s Bible, known and read of all men. The unsaved man does not read the Christian’s Bible, but he reads the Christian very critically. Those who “have tasted the good word of God” must let the Bible become a part of themselves. We are to become living Bibles by translating the Bible into our actions and feelings. I fear some of us are very poor translations. A revised edition is greatly needed that the lost world might have a more nearly correct copy.

“THE POWERS OF THE WORLD TO COME”

The proper translation of this expression is “the powers of the age to come.” This is a reference to the Millennial Age to come after this present church age has run its course. By faith, the believer makes the age to come a present reality, although he presently has only a foretaste of what is to come. The outward miracles which the Hebrews saw in the apostolic age and the inward quickening influence of the Spirit are the earnest of the coming Millennial glory. While in this lowland of sin and sorrow, the believer gives himself up to the Spirit, sits in heavenly places in Christ, sets his affections on things above and looks for Christ to return, and with His return, the full manifestation of the world to come.

The world to come exists already in the redeemed of God in the Person of the Holy Spirit. The believer already enjoys by regeneration some of the wonders to be fully realized when Christ rules from His glorious throne in Jerusalem. The age to come will be characterized by the pouring out of the Spirit on all flesh (Joel 2:28) and the actual presence of the heavenly Gift - Jesus Christ. What happened at Pentecost will happen on a worldwide scale in the kingdom age. Nearly all of the world will be born again and enjoy the fullness of the Spirit (Isaiah 11:9, Daniel 7:27).

There is a new world coming! A wonderful world of tomorrow! It will know no poverty or sickness. Wars will be unknown and funerals most uncommon. There will be peace on earth and good will among men. Even the animals will live together in peace. There will be economic prosperity such as the world has never known. Jesus Christ will rule all the earth in righteousness from His throne in Jerusalem.

Sinner, are you ready for the new age to come? Do you know the coming King as your Lord and Master? Unless you have been enlightened, unless you have tasted the good Word of God, unless you are a partaker of the Holy Spirit, then you are not ready to enter the age to come. To enter the age to come, you must become acquainted with Christ as your Savior in this present age.

X. ASSURANCE OF SALVATION

“And we desire that every one of you do show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end” (Hebrews 6:11).

Every professed Christian should have full assurance of his own salvation. My text says: “Every one of you.” “Full assurance of hope” is the highest degree of hope, and it is only obtainable by an all-out effort to lay hold upon it. The text says we must show “diligence.” To have full assurance is to come to a state of mind where there is the fullest conviction of a place in Heaven and where there is no doubt about going there. It is to be personally persuaded of an interest in the covenant of grace and of a work of grace upon your soul. According to my text, we must have this hope to the end of life – “unto the end.”

Full assurance of salvation cannot be obtained by joining some church and engaging in rituals and ceremonies. It cannot be had by visions and raptures, nor by dreams and revelations from Heaven. We do not have to wait until we walk the golden streets of the New Jerusalem to know we are saved by the grace of God. Salvation is not something hoped for at death or the judgment. It is something received, enjoyed, and about which you can be assured of in this life. You can know this very day you are saved and Heaven-bound. If a man could be saved and not know it, then he could be lost again and not know that either.

SOME HAVE NO ASSURANCE

The vast majority of professed Christians have no assurance as to where they will spend eternity. They do not know if their companions will be angels or demons, saints or sinners. They believe that they must be saved by their good works, and they are never sure that their good works outweigh their bad ones. Others believe in falling from grace, and they do not know from one day until the next whether they are saved or lost. What could be worse than not knowing from one day until the next if you are going to Heaven or Hell? Such persons must live miserable lives and be troubled about many things.

Even some who hold to the doctrines of grace seem to have no assurance before God. They are heard to say such things as: “I hope I am one of the elect.” “I hope that Christ died for me.” “God has got some children who don’t know who their Father is.” Such expressions are expressions of ignorance. They indicate that some people have not made their calling and election sure as we are commanded to do in II Peter 1:10.

According to the Bible, you can know whether or not you are one of God’s elect: “Knowing, brethren beloved, your election of God” (I Thessalonians 1:4). Paul would not have told the Thessalonians to know their election unless it was possible to do so. II Peter 1:10 commands us: “Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure …” There would have been no need for Peter to urge believers to make their calling and election sure unless one could be sure of both. Job did not say: “I hope my Redeemer lives,” but he said: “I know that my Redeemer liveth” (Job 19:25). Every redeemed soul can say the same. David did not say: “I hope the Lord is my shepherd,” but he said: “The LORD is my shepherd” (Psalm 23:1). According to Jesus Christ, the Shepherd not only knows the sheep, but the sheep know the Shepherd: “I am the good shepherd, and know My sheep, and am known of Mine” (John 10:14).

You can be wrong about a great many Bible doctrines and still be saved from your sins, but you can’t be wrong about salvation and be saved. A man must be saved and know it. He must have the full assurance that he will spend eternity with Jesus Christ. He must have “assurance for ever” (Isaiah 32:17). He must know that he has passed from death unto life. He must have personal confidence in a present salvation. Anything less than this is not sufficient and leaves a person wondering where he will spend eternity.

CONVICTION OF SIN

No one has been saved from his sins until he first realizes that he is a lost sinner. This is the work of the Holy Spirit: “And when He is come, He will reprove the world of sin …” (John 16:8). First, the Spirit convicts a person of the nature of sin. He uses the Word of God in this vital work. He shows him that “the thought of foolishness is sin” (Proverbs 24:9). He makes him to know that the transgression of God’s moral law is sin (I John 3:4). He brings him to see that “all unrighteousness is sin” (I John 5:17) and “whatsoever is not of faith is sin” (Romans 14:23). The sinner is caused to realize that neglect of known good is a sin (James 4:17).

Second, the Spirit convicts a man of the destructive consequences of his own sins. Again the Spirit uses the Bible in doing this. “The soul that sinneth, it shall die” (Ezekiel 18:4, 20). “But he that doeth wrong shall receive for the wrong which he hath done: and there is no respect of persons” (Colossians 3:25). The Spirit will convict him of the fact that his unforgiven sins will take him to the lake of fire. He will cause him to see he cannot repent and believe the gospel without Divine help, and that he is as doomed as if he were already in the fires of Hell. Under this conviction of sin, the sinner often cries out: “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” (Acts 16:30; cf. Luke 3:10; Acts 2:37; 9:6).

Third, the person who has undergone Holy Spirit conviction openly confesses that he is a sinner before God. He may be heard to say such things as: “God be merciful to me a sinner” (Luke 18:13) or “I have sinned against heaven, and before thee” (Luke 15:18). Though an apostle of Jesus Christ, Simon Peter declared: “Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Luke 5:8). Paul, the great apostle to the Gentiles, said he was the chiefest of sinners (I Timothy 1:15). A person who has experienced Holy Spirit conviction often confesses his sins to God (Proverbs 28:13; I John 1:9). He sins every day more than he wants to. His constant prayer is: “Keep back Thy servant also from presumptuous sins …” (Psalm 19:13).

There can be no full assurance of salvation unless you can recall a time when the Holy Spirit revealed to you that you were a sinner. Individuals who have no trace of conviction of sin are yet in their sins and cannot escape the damnation of Hell. You cannot have the sinless Holy Spirit in you and not have a sense of sin. Sin is a burden to one who is truly converted and has the Holy Spirit dwelling in his heart.

REAL REPENTANCE

There is no salvation without repentance: “I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3). There is no forgiveness of sins without repentance: “And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations …” (Luke 24:47). There is no conversion without repentance: “Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out …” (Acts 3:19). There can be no faith in the gospel until there is first repentance: “Repent ye, and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:15). Repentance is absolutely essential to salvation.

What is repentance? It is a change of mind which leads to a change of conduct: “He answered and said, I will not: but afterward he repented, and went” (Matthew 21:29). Repentance is a change of mind with regard to everything (II Corinthians 5:17). When the Holy Spirit regenerates the sinner He renews his mind (Romans 12:2; Ephesians 4:23). This person has “a sound mind” (II Timothy 1:7) because he now has “the mind of Christ” (I Corinthians 2:16). The law of God is in his mind (Hebrews 8:10), and he obeys the Word with “all readiness of mind” (Acts 17:11). This change of mind is permanent, for repentance is a life-long process.

Repentance is especially a change of mind with regard to sin. The person who truly repents will confess his sins and forsake them: “He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy” (Proverbs 28:13). A penitent soul will forsake his wicked way and his wicked thoughts (Isaiah 55:7).

An old hymn said:

Repentance is to leave

The sins we loved before,

And to show that we in earnest grieve

By doing so no more.

Modern-day preachers do not tell sinners to repent of their sins. By this omission they preach a half gospel which is in truth another gospel. This false gospel leaves sinners in their sins and on the road to Hell. Without repentance men are destined to perish. Jesus Christ declared in no uncertain terms: “Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3). There can be no full assurance of the salvation of the soul unless a person knows he has obeyed God’s commandment to repent.

The great question is: Have you obeyed God’s commandment to repent of your sins against God? Acts 17:30 says: “And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent.” Did you become sorry enough for your sins to confess them to Christ and to forsake them for His glory? Is there in your bosom a holy hatred for sin and its evil consequence? If not, you are still in the bond of iniquity and the gall of bitterness. Oh, may you not be found among those whom God gave “over to a reprobate mind” (Romans 1:28).

TRUE FAITH

Saving faith is a definite experience. The Apostle Paul expressed himself thusly: “… for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day” (II Timothy 1:12). It is as if Paul had said: “I stand on the Rock Christ. I know I have committed my soul to Christ who is a safe and sure Trustee.” And so it is with every person who trusts Christ. One cannot trust his soul to Christ’s safe keeping without knowing what he has done.

Faith is more than believing in some creed, or signing some card, or saying a little prayer, or making a brief confession before a preacher. It is not belief in Christianity, but in Christ. It is to receive Christ in all His office work; it is to receive His teachings and laws. It is believing in a real, living person - Jesus Christ. It is forsaking all for Christ (Luke 14:26-27). It is a complete surrender of one’s whole being and life to the claims of the Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 9:6). Anything less than this is to believe in vain (I Corinthians 15:2).

If you have truly put your faith in Jesus Christ to be your Savior you can be assured of many spiritual blessings in Christ. You can know that you are born again: “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God” (I John 5:1). You can be confident you are saved: “And He said to the woman, Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace” (Luke 7:50). You can know that you are justified: “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1). You can rest easy about having eternal life: “Verily, verily I say unto you, He that believeth on Me hath everlasting life” (John 6:47). You can be certain you are a son of God: “For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus” (Gaatians 3:26). You can be mindful your heart has been purified: “And put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith” (Acts 15:9).

You can believe many a truth contained in the Bible and not have the faith of God’s elect. You may have head faith which is a mere product of nature. True, saving faith is imparted by the Holy Spirit through the Word. True saving faith will produce good works (Ephesians 2:8-10) and a life separated from the world and separated to Christ. What a man believes, he acts upon. If there is no action, there is no faith.

Faith influences all other graces. Love, touched by the hand of faith, shows forth itself in good works. Hope feeds at faith’s table and grows stronger. Joy, courage, and zeal, being smiled upon by faith, are made invincible and unconquerable. Sufferings and persecutions are made sweet by faith. What oil is to a machine, what wings are to a bird, what weights are to a clock, what sails are to a ship, what rain and sunshine are to a plant, that faith is to all religious duties and services.

There is a false faith which does not save. It is an inactive faith; it is a dead faith like the demons have (James 2:19). James goes to great lengths to condemn such a faith in chapter 2 of his book: “Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: show me thy faith without thy works, and I will show thee my faith by my works. Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble. But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?” (James 2:17-20). Faith which does not work by love is no more faith than the demons have. There is no salvation for demons, or for those who have an inactive faith.

Faith is a permanent grace; it is an enduring grace. He who trusteth “in the name of the LORD” is also said to “stay upon his God” (Isaiah 50:10). Faith has in it a conquering principle, it causes the one who has it to overcome the world (I John 5:4). A temporary faith which lasts only for a time is not the faith of God’s elect. It is the faith of a stony-ground hearer: “But he that receiveth the seed into stony places, the same is he that heareth the word, and anon with joy receiveth it; Yet hath he not root in himself, but endureth for a while: for when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word, by and by he is offended” (Matthew 13:20-21).

Do you have true faith in Christ? A faith which sets love to work? A faith that takes God at His Word and lays hold upon the promises of God? Does your faith produce good works? Do you believe that Jesus Christ is the Messiah of the Old Testament? Can you say with Simon Peter: “And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God” (John 6:69). Has your faith caused zeal and patience to come alive in your life? If these things are not true in your case, then you have the faith of demons, and you shall share in their punishment in the hereafter.

A CHANGED LIFE

Most professed Christians are unregenerated. They made a profession; they repeated the sinner’s prayer; they went down the Roman Road; they joined some church; they were baptized by some preacher, but there was no change in their lives. They were just as sinful and wicked after their supposed conversion as before. Even the old dog in the backyard knew that nothing had happened. Their relatives and friends looked at them and said: “If that is religion, then I want nothing to do with it.”

Regeneration gives man a new and sinless nature. This new nature awakes, restores and controls the faculties even that man already had in existence. The change is so great that the regenerated man is called a new creature or creation: “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature” (Galatians 6:15). A tremendous change occurs in the inward and outward life of such a person: “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (II Corinthians 5:17). Paul describes this great change in these words: “For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness … But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life” (Romans 6:20, 22). What a great change! To go from being a servant of sin to being a servant of God!

Regeneration is the transformation of our moral likeness into the image of God: “And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him” (Colossians 3:10). The whole image of God is stamped upon the new creature, not just a foot or a finger. The image of a man has not only the face or eyes, but the other members of the body as well. If the whole image of God is not there it would not be a likeness to God, but a monstrous birth in defect. As God is holy, even so holiness and righteousness will be seen in the life of a regenerated man: “If ye know that He is righteous, ye know that every one that doeth righteousness is born of Him” (I John 2:29). To the Ephesians Paul wrote: “And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness” (Ephesians 4:24).

If God cannot keep a person from a sinful, wicked life, then He cannot keep his soul out of Hell. The Scriptures teach that the Lord Jesus Christ does not save His people so they can go on enjoying the pleasures of sin, but He “save(s) His people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). A man is not saved from sin if he continues to live in it: “Whosoever abideth in Him sinneth not: whosoever sinneth hath not seen Him, neither known Him” (I John 3:6). A man who has died to sin will not live any longer therein (Romans 6:1-2).

A holy God does not save a man by grace in order for him to live a life of disgrace. The “grace of God that bringeth salvation” teaches us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts and to “live soberly, righteously and godly in this present world” (Titus 2:11-12). Any person who claims to be saved by grace and lives a life of disgrace has never known “the grace of God in truth” (Colossians 1:6).

A person made alive spiritually must “walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). A man is not justified by faith unless faith has made him a just man. I would sooner expect to see an infidel in Heaven than a man who does not live a holy life after regeneration. In Titus 3:5 Paul wrote: “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost.” Then he goes on to write: “This is a faithful saying, and these things I will that thou affirm constantly, that they which have believed in God might be careful to maintain good works. These things are good and profitable unto men” (Titus 3:8).

There must be harmony between a man’s life and profession: “If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth” (I John 1:6). If a man’s religion did not change his life, then he ought to change his religion! If you do not live differently after your conversion than before you were converted, then your conversion is a mere fiction and your repentance needs to be repented of!

FULL ASSURANCE OF SALVATION

OBEDIENCE TO THE COMMANDMENTS

The Bible emphatically teaches that a born-again Christian has a willingness to obey the Lord in all His commandments. Consider the conversion of Saul of Tarsus: “And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?” (Acts 9:6). The question: “Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do,” reveals unqualified submission to the will of Christ. The will of the Sanhedrin was nothing to him; the will of Christ was everything. Here we learn that the first act of a Christian is to surrender his own will to the will of Christ and to resolve to do what He requires. If the affections and will are not given to the Lord Jesus Christ, to be directed and molded by Him at His pleasure, there has been no real conversion.

Those who do not obey the Lord’s commandments are His enemies: “Ye are My friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you” (John 15:14). It is not enough to claim to be a friend of Christ and be a member of some religious denomination. You must prove yourself to be His friend by being obedient to Him. You are not at liberty to pick and choose what you shall do. Our Lord said: “Whatsoever I command you.” You must receive Him as a complete Savior and serve Him as a complete Lord. You must not imagine that you are Christ’s friend, if you do not habitually practice His commandments. Multitudes who talk of being “God’s elect,” while they live in sin and neglect of Christ’s plain commands, are on the road to Hell. They are deceived by the Devil about their own salvation.

In regeneration the love of God is implanted in the heart by the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5). This love prompts us to obey Christ. In John 14:15 Jesus Christ said: “If ye love Me, keep My commandments.” Again in verse 21 He said: “He that hath My commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me …” He who really loves another is naturally desirous of acting in accord with the wishes and will of the one loved. Without such a desire there is no true love. Even so, wherever love for Jesus Christ is found in the soul, that love will show itself by doing what is well-pleasing in His sight. Obedience is the true test of real love for Christ. Knowledge and talk is not enough.

Another reason the believer obeys the Lord’s commandments is that he has a new nature which delights in these commandments: “For I delight in the law of God after the inward man” (Romans 7:22). “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments: and His commandments are not grievous” (I John 5:3). A born again believer has more pleasure in praying than in playing, more delight in the law of God than the laws of men, more joy in giving a tithe than receiving one. The Lord’s commandments are his sweetest delight (Ezekiel 36:26).

One is not a sheep of the great Shepherd unless he follows Christ: “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me” (John 10:27). Christians are described as “they which follow the Lamb” (Revelation 14:4). The sheep follow the good Shepherd in a willing obedience to His commandments. They follow Him as their great Leader and Pattern. They follow the teachings of His Word and the leadings of His providence. This description belongs only to the Lord’s sheep. It is not true of hypocrites in the church who are goats.

Do you know Christ in the free pardon of your sins? Do you know Him as your Lord and Savior? I did not ask if you prayed through, nor if you sat on a mourner’s bench, nor if you joined some church. Do you know Christ of whom to know is to have life eternal (John 17:3)? You may say, “How can I be sure I know Christ?” To which I would reply: Consider 1 John 2:3-4: “And hereby we do know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. He that saith, I know Him, and keepeth not His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” In these verses John puts forth the keeping of the commandments and ordinances of Christ as a proof of acquaintance with Christ. Only those who obey Christ can have full assurance of salvation.

To call Christ Lord and ignore His commandments is to mock Christ. In Luke 6:46 He asked: “And why call ye Me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?” It is not enough to call Christ “Lord, Lord” before men. We must do what He requires and obey His commandments. In Matthew 7:21 Christ declared: “Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of My Father which is in heaven.”

Two very important verses on this subject is Hebrews 5:8-9; “Though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered; And being made perfect, He became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey Him.” Three truths are seen in this verse. First, Christ was made our perfect high priest by learning obedience by the things He suffered. Second, the salvation which He secured by His obedience and death is an eternal salvation. Third, “all them that obey Him” describes those who are the beneficiaries of His atonement. This obedience is not to be restricted to the initial act of becoming a Christian, but to the whole life of a believer (Romans 16:26; Acts 5:32).

LOVE FOR OTHER SAVED PEOPLE

There can be no full assurance of salvation without love for the brethren. In the Bible love for the brotherhood is made an absolute test of personal salvation: “We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death” (I John 3:14). He who loves God loves the other children of God in the family. This is the normal experience of all who are born again. Love of the brethren is one way we can know we have passed from spiritual death to spiritual life. The unloving heart has never had the life of the Spirit. Such a person is separated from eternal life and its Giver.

I John 2:10-11 says: “He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him. But he that hateth his brother is in darkness, and walketh in darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth, because that darkness hath blinded his eyes.” He who has a love like Christ is a Christian. Such an individual has the evidence of being in God’s light and of knowing that he is. He who hates his brother is a groping, blind person in outer darkness and does not see that he is headed to everlasting darkness.

Love for the brethren is the new spiritual life in action. It is the sure proof that spiritual life is in the soul. There is a drawing to other Christians, a delightful love for them, a peculiar pleasure in being where they congregate, and a relishing of their friendship and fellowship. Mutual brotherly love is the distinctive mark of a Christian. Jesus Christ said: “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another” (John 13:35). In the early days of Christianity the heathen were heard to exclaim: “Behold, how these Christians love one another, and see how they are ready to die for one another.” Is such being said of professed Christians of today?

A child of God has God’s nature. Therefore, he loves his brethren who have God’s nature. All Christians are children of the same Father; we are all constituted one big, happy family; we all bear the same image. If we love the Father, then we must love the children of the Father. I John 5:1 declares: “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: and every one that loveth Him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of Him.”

The unloving heart is in a state of spiritual death: “He that loveth not his brother abideth in death” (I John 3:14). “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” (I John 4:20). If a child of God means no more to you than anybody else, you are a goat and not a sheep. If the society of the church means no more to you than the society of the world, you are not converted. You are one of the Devil’s deceived dupes!

REALITY IN PRAYER

Praying is the same to the new-born Christian as crying is to a new born child. The child is not taught by its mother or by some other to cry. He comes into the world crying, having been instructed by nature. Praying is not a lesson gotten by forms or fancy, but it is something which flows from the new nature received by the Holy Spirit. An indication of true regeneration is real prayer. To convince Ananias that Saul of Tarsus had been saved, the Lord told him: “Behold, he prayeth” (Acts 9:11). This shows that a true Christian is a praying man.

According to holy Scripture, one of the characteristics of God’s elect is that they “cry day and night unto Him” (Luke 18:7). No one can have evidence that he is chosen of God who is not a man of prayer. One of the best proofs that God has chosen us out of a world of sinners and conferred grace upon us, is that we have a disposition to pray. A hypocrite may not “always call upon God” (Job 27:10), but one chosen of God to eternal life prays constantly. “Oh, LORD God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before Thee” (Psalm 88:1).

Prayer holds a vital place in the experience of a true believer. It is the life and breath of one of God’s elect. At the point of prayer true religion begins and flourishes. Here it also decays (Matthew 26:40-41). Before conversion a man is too proud to pray. But when he makes his calling and election sure he humbles himself, and he often asks God for mercy and grace to help in time of need. He who never goes before the throne of grace has never been saved by grace. The old Baptists used to say, “If prayerless, then graceless.”

THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT

The Holy Spirit testifies to our minds that we are an adopted child of God: “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God” (Romans 8:16). Here we see that the Holy Spirit co-witnesses with our human spirit. Here are two witnesses: one Divine and the other human. These two witnesses give full assurance of salvation and sonship.

The Holy Spirit is frequently said in the Bible to testify of our sonship. “And hereby we know that He abideth in us, by the Spirit which He hath given us” (I John 3:24). “He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself” (I John 5:10). It is not merely the fruits of the Spirit in the life of a believer which gives this testimony, but the Spirit Himself assures the believer of his saving interest in Christ. He does this by imparting filial confidence in the heart.

This witness of the Spirit to our spiritual sonship is not for the benefits of unbelievers or believers who may be in doubt about us. It is for the good of the one who is begotten of the Spirit. Every saved person at some time or another doubts his salvation. We doubt because of our own sinfulness and unworthiness, because we are bent to backsliding from Christ, because there are many burdens in the Christian life, and because of the many temptations of Satan. So the Spirit is given to us that we may know we are a son of God and an inheritor in the kingdom of God. The Holy Spirit is not deceived nor does He deceive anyone. He witnesses to what He knows for sure and certain. This Divine testimony is greater than all others. “And hereby we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before him. For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things” (I John 3:19-20).

A Christian feels he is a son of God because of the witness of the Spirit. What do you think of God? Is He a terrible and awful being you fear to approach, or can you approach Him with perfect confidence and with little fear? Do you have a son’s affection toward the heavenly Father? Can you see the fruits of the Spirit in your life (Galatians 5:22-23)? If you do have these things, then God has “given the earnest of the Spirit in” your heart (II Corinthians 1:22). Romans 8:9 says: “Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.”

ABILITY TO UNDERSTAND THE BIBLE

An unsaved person cannot understand the Bible, for he does not have the Holy Spirit to reveal it to him. “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (I Corinthians 2:14). The lost man cannot understand the truths of the gospel, nor can he discern the cardinal doctrines of the Bible. The natural man does not find these things to his liking, for his understanding is closed to these things. He rejects them as religious foolishness. Hence he never reads the Bible; he never wants to hear it preached; he cares not what it may teach. The Bible means nothing to such a man.

The renewed man has the Holy Spirit, and he can understand the truths of the Bible: “But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in Him” (I John 2:27). “Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God” (I Corinthians 2:12).

The Holy Spirit is given to the believer in order that he can understand the Word of God. The Holy Spirit makes him to look into the pages of the blessed Book so that he may fully understand and appreciate the favors which have been conferred upon him in Christ Jesus. Nature does not teach him these things. They can be known only by those enlightened by the Spirit and who read and study the Bible.

A truly regenerated man loves to read, study, and meditate in the Bible: “O how love I Thy law! it is my meditation all the day” (Psalm 119:97). He desires to read and study the Bible as much as a new-born babe desires his mother’s breast: “As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby” (I Peter 2:2). He desires to hear it preached and taught in the church. Where there is no love for the Bible, there is no spiritual life. It is written in John 8:47 that Christ said: “He that is of God heareth God’s words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God.”

XI. THE RUIN OF AN OBSTINATE SINNER

“He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy” (Proverbs 29:1).

The revealed will of God is the law of the universe. God has the right to expect obedience to His laws from His creatures. As the divine Lawgiver, He cannot tolerate disobedience. Though He is long-suffering toward rebellious mankind, He must at some point punish rebels. Those who will not be reformed by God’s restorative discipline must expect to be ruined by it.

THE PERSON DESCRIBED

The text begins: “He, that being often reproved …” According to these words, there is such a thing as an obstinate sinner, a stubborn, self-willed person, an incorrigible rebel against God. By nature man does not love, reverence, honor, or serve God. “Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God” (Romans 8:7-8). Although man owes everything to his Maker and generous Benefactor, he refuses to pay his great debt. He is estranged in spirit, and his whole life is one of disloyalty and rebellion.

It is an astonishing sight to see men who clench the chains of their sins and shun freedom. How stupid it is for a man who is shortly to enter into an unchangeable, endless life, to live as if there was no God, no grave, and no hereafter. He goes merrily toward his own damnation and makes a jest of his own undoing. He sleeps in sin so near eternity; he laughs and dances over the brink of Hell.

An all-seeing God takes notice of all such persons. “Because I knew that thou art obstinate, and thy neck is an iron sinew, and thy brow brass … Yea, thou heardest not; yea, thou knewest not; yea, from that time that thine ear was not opened: for I knew that thou wouldest deal very treacherously, and wast called a transgressor from the womb” (Isaiah 48:4, 8).

Proverbs 12:15 declares: “The way of a fool is right in his own eyes: but he that hearkeneth unto counsel is wise.” An obstinate sinner’s will is the law of his life. This is what keeps a fool from being wise enough to give up his sins. Like the Israelites in the days of the judges, such people “ceased not from their own doings, nor from their stubborn way” (Judges 2:19). Such a self-willed person is described in the Bible as “stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears” (Acts 7:51). He is guilty of hardening his neck (Nehemiah 9:16) or heart (II Chronicles 36:13) and of going “backward, and not forward” (Jeremiah 7:24).

THE SOURCE OF THIS OBSTINACY

First, this obstinacy proceeds from unbelief: “Notwithstanding they would not hear, but hardened their necks, like to the neck of their fathers, that did not believe in the LORD their God” (II Kings 17:14). When men do not receive the truth of God’s Word and doubt His promises, they will persist in their disobedience. Rebels against God have no faith in God or His Word.

Second, this stubbornness arises from pride: “But they and our fathers dealt proudly, and hardened their necks, and hearkened not to Thy commandments” (Nehemiah 9:16, 29). Pride is at the bottom of men’s obstinacy and disobedience. They are too proud to bow their necks to God’s moral and spiritual yoke.

Third, obstinacy comes from an evil heart: “But they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear, but walked in the counsels and in the imagination of their evil heart, and went backward, and not forward” (Jeremiah 7:24). How foolish for a man to make his own wicked and deceitful heart his guide (Jeremiah 17:9). Well did King Solomon say: “He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool” (Proverbs 28:26).

FEW MEN GO TO HELL UNWARNED

According to my text, stubborn sinners are “often reproved.” These reproofs may take many forms. These warnings are addressed to man’s reason, his conscience, and his affections. These warnings in various forms leave the sinner without excuse, and they allow him to fit himself for destruction.

First, the faithful preaching of the Word is a rebuke to the thoughtless and sinful: “And the word of the LORD came unto Zechariah, saying, Thus speaketh the LORD of hosts, saying, Execute true judgment, and shew mercy and compassions every man to his brother: And oppress not the widow, nor the fatherless, the stranger, nor the poor; and let none of you imagine evil against his brother in your heart. But they refused to hearken, and pulled away the shoulder, and stopped their ears, that they should not hear. Yea, they made their hearts as an adamant stone, lest they should hear the law, and the words which the LORD of hosts hath sent in His spirit by the former prophets: therefore came a great wrath from the LORD of hosts” (Zechariah 7:8-12).

Rebuking sin is especially the work of a minister of the gospel. The Apostle Paul wrote to ministers: “Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine” (II Timothy 4:2). Paul told Timothy, a young preacher, to rebuke the immoral: “Them that sin rebuke before all, that others also may fear” (I Timothy 5:20). Modern-day preachers are content to sit back and draw their salaries while their congregations go to Hell without one word of reproof. These peace-at-any-price, good-Lord-and-good-Devil preachers never engage in plain, positive, dogmatic rebuke of the erring. They fear the moving van and the faces of men more than they do God. Their end shall be according to their works.

Second, God-fearing men and women may be used of the Lord to reprimand others: “Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart: thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbor, and not suffer sin upon him” (Leviticus 19:17). Our Lord said: “Take heed to yourselves: If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him” (Luke 17:3). We must not only avoid sin, but we must endeavor to reform other sinners. Friendly rebuke is a duty we owe to each other, and we ought to give it and receive it in love. If we do not reprove the unfruitful workers of darkness, we have fellowship with them (Ephesians 5:11).

Third, some children carelessly ignore the rebuke of their parents: “If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them” (Deuteronomy 21:18). Today parents often warn their children of the evil of drugs, premarital sex, alcohol abuse, laziness, atheism, and unbelief in the gospel, but these warnings largely go unheeded.

Fourth, conscience is sometimes a means of reproof to the wayward man or woman. Conscience is designed by God to accuse us of wrong (Romans 2:15). Though defiled by sin (Titus 1:15), it still testifies of right and wrong and of the existence of God who rewards right and punishes wrong. In John 8 some men accused a woman of adultery. Christ told these accusers: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her … And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst” (John 8:7, 9). Prolonged and unheeded rebuke may cause conscience to be “seared with a hot iron” (I Timothy 4:2).

Fifth, God chides men by providential chastisement. In the Book of Amos, chapter 4, Jehovah sent a lack of necessities (verse 5), envious surroundings (verses 7-8), reversal of prosperity (verse 9), severe judgments (verse 10), and unusual events (verse 11) on Israel to reclaim them. Despite all these providential warnings, Jehovah complained: “Yet have not returned unto Me” (Amos 4:8, 9, 10, 11). For their failure to heed these chastening rebukes, Jehovah told them: “Prepare to meet thy God, O Israel” (Amos 4:12).

By many messengers and in many voices, God calls sinners to repentance and reconciliation. “As I live; saith the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?” (Ezekiel 33:11). The general call of the gospel says: “Seek ye the LORD while He may be found, call ye upon Him while He is near: Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD, and He will have mercy upon him: and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon” (Isaiah 55:6-7).

REPROOF SHOULD BE RECEIVED

Among mankind rebuke comes from people who love you and desire your good. It should be received with all humility of mind: “Let the righteous smite me; it shall be a kindness: and let him reprove me; it shall be an excellent oil, which shall not break my head … ” (Psalm 141:5). Righteous men and women are best qualifiedto reprove the unrighteousness of others. Fools resent constructive criticism: “They hate him that rebuketh in the gate, and they abhor him that speaketh unrightly” (Amos 5:10). Our Savior said: “The world cannot hate you; but Me it hateth, because I testify of it, that the works thereof are evil” (John 7:7). A wise man profits from a kind rebuke: “He that rebuketh a man afterwards shall find more favour than he that flattereth with the tongue” (Proverbs 28:23).

The man or woman, the boy or girl, who fails to hear the many rebukes from God and man are guilty of many crimes. First, they disclose they have no more intelligence than brute beasts: “Whoso loveth instruction loveth knowledge: but he that hateth reproof is brutish” (Proverbs 12:1). Many cows and sheep live off of the fat of the land not knowing they are being fatted for the slaughter house. Sorry to say, but some men and women have no more sense than cows and sheep.

Second, he despises his own soul: “He that refuseth instruction despiseth his own soul” (Proverbs 15:32). Men today are so concerned with their bodies, but they care little for theirs souls. How foolish! Their soul is worth more than their body; yea, even the whole world (Matthew 16:26).

Third, an obstinate despising of reproof is fatal: “Correction is grievous unto him that forsaketh the way: and he that hateth reproof shall die” (Proverbs 15:10). The man who shuns reproof loves death and seeks banishment from God.

Fourth, such conduct gives evidence of reprobation: “But My people would not hearken to My voice; and Israel would none of Me. So I gave them up unto their own hearts’ lust: and they walked in their own counsels” (Psalm 81:11-12). “Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith” (II Timothy 3:8). Those who receive “not the love of the truth, that they might be saved” shall all “be damned” (II Thessalonians 2:10, 12).

THE ABUSE OF REPROOF

“He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck …” The metaphor is taken from oxen, which kick and jump, and will not permit the yoke to be put upon them (Deuteronomy 10:16; Jeremiah 2:20; 27:8). Jeremiah wrote: “I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself thus; Thou hast chastised me, and I was chastised, as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke …” (Jeremiah 31:18).

The hardening of the neck reveals human responsibility. God holds men responsible for rejecting the truth. Jesus Christ said: “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned” (Mark 16:16).

This action implies determination. A person who is never reproved might plead ignorance or forgetfulness. This excuse cannot be used by a man who has been “often reproved.” His disregarded warnings will rise up in the judgment to condemn him.

The hardening of the neck implies a hardness of heart. It is possible for a sinner to harden his heart. Hence the warning in Hebrews 3:7-8: “Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, To day if ye will hear His voice, Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness.” Pharaoh “Hardened his heart” (Exodus 8:15, 19, 32; 9:7) and refused to liberate the Hebrew slaves in the days of Moses. The Israelites hardened their hearts in the wilderness and could not enter the promised land. Until a man’s heart is renewed by the grace of God, the impressions by human warning wear off. It is the depraved heart that makes the neck hard. A stiff-necked person is a stony-hearted person.

Woe to the man or woman who is stubborn and obstinate after many reproofs. Such a person despises the merciful appointments of providence for his recovery and disdains the warning of his fellow creatures. Such a one turns God’s blessings into curses and converts the very means intended to soften his nature into deadly poison. This godless person is content to satisfy his bodily appetites, to eat and drink, and die, and leave undeveloped his capacities for the higher things of life. “But they obeyed not, neither inclined their ear, but made their neck stiff, that they might not hear, nor receive instruction” (Jeremiah 17:23).

Sin repeated is habit forming. Jesus said: “Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin” (John 8:34). Though often reproved for his sins, such a person tends to harden his heart more and more. The ear grows deaf to the often-neglected alarm. “Because they rebelled against the words of God, and contemed the counsel of the most High: Therefore He brought down their heart with labour; they fell down, and there was none to help” (Psalm 107:11-12).

Each day that a wicked man lives on this earth is a time of preservation, privilege, and possibilities. God invites sinners to repentance and faith through gospel preachers and the voice of witnessing disciples (Mark 1:15). Sad to say, but many abuse the gift of life by using it for their own personal enjoyment; they slight opportunities; they despise the means of grace. Though often warned that such conduct will lead to Hell, many have their conscience paralyzed, their eyes blinded and their necks hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil” (Ecclesiastes 8:11).

HIS SUDDEN RUIN

“He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy” (Proverbs 29:1). Divine patience has an end. Vessels of wrath are “endured with much long-suffering” show themselves “fitted to destruction” (Romans 9:22). They shall suddenly be destroyed as a potter’s vessel is broken to pieces with an iron rod (Psalm 2:9). “Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Even so will I break this people and this city, as one breaketh a potter’s vessel, that cannot be made whole again: and they shall bury them in Tophet, till there be no place to bury” (Jeremiah 19:11). The days of probation of an obstinate sinner shall end with startling suddenness. The soul shall be required in one night (Luke 12:20). “But God shall wound the head of His enemies, and the hairy scalp of such an one as goeth on still in his trespasses” (Psalm 68:21).

Death comes to them without warning: “In a moment shall they die, and the people shall be troubled at midnight, and pass away: and the mighty shall be taken away without hand” (Job 34:20). They shall pass from guilt to judgment: “And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27). Their destruction is without remedy. As they lived, so they die. They go to stand before God unwashed from their sins (Proverbs 30:11-14) and with no advocate to plead their cause. As they sink down in the flames of Hell, every tongue of fire will seem to whisper, “Without remedy!” The reproofs they once heard will be like hot thunderbolts to their wretched souls, and the remembrance of them will feed the worm that never dies. “Reprobate silver shall men call them, because the LORD hath rejected them” (Jeremiah 6:30).

CONCLUSION

1. Every person saved by the grace of God should get down on his knees every day and thank the Lord for saving his soul. If it were not for the blood of the everlasting covenant and the grace of God, we all would die obstinate sinners and suffer eternal torment. Oh, to grace! how great a debtor we are daily constrained to be!

2. Reproof of all kinds are intended to guard the foolish soul against impending danger and destruction. But when these rebukes go unheeded, there can be no escape for the stubborn reprobate. “… Surely this iniquity shall not be purged from you till ye die, saith the Lord GOD of hosts” (Isaiah 22:14). There is doubt guilt. The rejection of the reproof is an additional sin - an insult to a righteous God. “Or despiseth thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance? But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God; Who will render to every man according to his deeds” (Romans 2:4-6).

3. Presently, sinner, your judgment and damnation lingers. You are not yet in the fires of Hell. You are yet standing upon the goodness and forebearance of God. Don’t let death find you unprepared to face a righteous God. As long as there is life, there is hope. “Because there is wrath, beware lest He take thee away with His stoke: then a great ransom cannot deliver thee” (Job 36:18). When the final blow is struck all will be over. Then the voices of warnings will be lost in the thunders of justice, and the star of hope buried in the midnight of despair.

4. Let it never be said of you as it was of Israel of old: “But they mocked the messengers of God, and despised His words, and misused His prophets, until the wrath of the LORD arose against His people, till there was no remedy” (II Chronicles 36:16). How fearful to hear God say to you some day: “Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out My hand, and no man regarded; But ye have set at nought all My counsel, and would none of My reproof: I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; When your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you. Then shall they call upon Me, but I will not answer; they shall seek Me early, but they shall not find Me: For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the LORD: They would none of My counsel: they despised all My reproof. Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices” (Proverbs 1:24-31).

Other Books Available By The Author

Other books by the author . . .

The Tithe is the Lord’s (1962)

Why We are not Southern Baptists (1963)

The Christian Home (1964)

Christ, Christians, and Christmas (1967)

One Hundred Reasons for the Pre-Trib Rapture (1976)

Sacerdotalism and the Baptist (1979)

In Search of the Universal, Invisible Church (1982)

The Doctrine of Hell (1985)

The Veiled Woman (1987)

Wine, Worship, and the Word (1988)

The Gospel in Isaiah (1995)

Scriptural Church Organization (1998)

Here Comes the Bride! (1999)

Studies in the Book of Jonah (2000)

The Song of Solomon (2000)

The Tithe is the Lord’s (2000) revised

Why Be A Church Member? (2000)

The Seventy Weeks (2001)

Death and the Hereafter (2002)

Wine, Worship, and the Word (2002) revised

Outlines for Country Preachers Vol 1 Esther (2001)

Outlines for Country Preachers Vol 2 Micah (2001)

Outlines for Country Preachers Vol 3 Philemon (2001)

Outlines for Country Preachers Vol 4 Habakkuk (2001)

Outlines for Country Preachers Vol 5 Ecclesiastes (2001)

Outlines for Country Preachers Vol 6 Song of Solomon (2001)

Outlines for Country Preachers Vol 7 Malachi (2001)

Outlines for Country Preachers Vol 8 Thessalonians (2002)