Comfortable thoughts arise From the bleeding sacrifice. Jesus has become at length My Salvation and my strength; And his praises shall prolong, While I live, my pleasant song. ’”
Dear friends, last of all, having thus given them the consolation, he gave a quietus for their understanding in an explanation. He says, “It was not you, it was God that sent me hither.” So doth Christ say to the poor soul that feels itself guilty of the Lord’s crucifixion. “It was not you,” says he,” it was God that sent me to preserve your lives with a great deliverance. Man was the second agent in Christ’s death, but God was the great first worker, for he was delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, man did it to destroy righteousness, but God did it to save even the ungodly. Man hath the crime, but God hath the triumphing; man rules, but God overrules. The gall hath become honey, out of the eater hath come forth sweetness. Death is destroyed by Jesus’ death; hell upturned by hell’s blackest deed. Sinner, Christ died to save thee with a great deliverance, what sayest thou? Art thou willing to come to him? if so, he made thee willing. Dost thou say, “But what is to come?”- to come to Christ is to trust him. Are you willing to renounce yourself and your sin and trust Christ, and take him to have and to hold, for better for worse, through life and through death, in time and in eternity? Doth thy heart say “Yes.” Wilt thou come to this man? Shall there be a match made of it this morning? Shall your heart be affianced and married into Christ? Ah! then, put this ring of promise on thy finger and go away affianced unto Christ, and this is the ring, “Though thy sins be as scarlet they shall be as wool, though they be red like crimson they shall be whiter than snow.” I feel this morning as though my Master had given me such a sweet message that I cannot tell it as I would, but it may be that there is some soul here that is like a little flower which has opened its cup to catch the dew drop, and it will be good for such a soul. It may be there is a heart here that has been in darkness, and though it be but a candle I can bring, yet that light shall be pleasant to its poor eyes so long used to this horrid gloom. Oh! that some heart here would trust the Lord Jesus. Is there none? Must we go back, and say in the closet, “Lord, who hath believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?” Surely, there is one. Perhaps it is a stranger here, of whom I shall never hear again in this world. Well, but the Lord shall hear of it, and he shall have the praise. Perhaps it is one that has long sat in this house of prayer, invulnerable up till now. Perhaps the arrow has found a joint in the harness. O soul! by him that stretches out his arms of love to thee, and by the grace that moves thee now to run into those arms, come to him. “Be not grieved nor angry with yourselves.” It was God that put Christ to death, that he might save you with a great deliverance. Trust Jesus, and you are saved, and you shall give him praise, world without end. Amen
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
