“Ready to perish.”—Isaiah 27:13.
“Ready to forgive.”—Psalm 86:5.
“The graves are ready for me.”—Job 17:1.
When attempting to prepare for this service, I found it impossible to fix my mind upon any one subject. This afternoon, I had to take rather a long journey to visit a friend who is sick unto death, and at his bedside I trust I have learned some lessons of encouragement, and have been animated by witnessing the joy and peace which God grants to his children in their declining hours. Finding that I could not fix upon any one subject, I thought that I would have three. It may be that, out of the three, there will be one intended by divine grace for a third of the audience, the second for another third, and the other for the rest, so that there will be a portion of meat in due season for all. You know, dear friends, that the motto of our navy is, “Ready, ay, ready! “That is something like my present subject, for I have three texts in which the word “Ready” occurs, each time in a different connection.
I. The first text will be specially addressed to those who are under concern of soul, having been led, by the enlightening influence of the Divine Spirit, to see their state by nature, and to tremble in the prospect of their deserved doom. The text which will suit their case is in Isaiah 27:13: “READY TO PERISH, “They shall come which were ready to perish.”
By nature, all men, whether they know it or not, are ready to perish. Human nature is, like a blind man, always in danger; nay worse than that, it is like a blind man upon the verge of a tremendous cliff, ready to take the fatal step which will lead to his destruction. The most callous and proud, the most careless and profane, cannot, by their indifference or their boasting, altogether evade the apprehension that their state, by nature, is alarming and defenseless. They may try to laugh it away from their minds, but they cannot laugh away the fact. They may shut their eyes to it; but they shall no more escape, by shutting their eyes, than doth the silly ostrich escape from the hunter by thrusting its head into the sand. Whether thou wilt have it so, or no, fast young man in the dawn of thy days;—whether thou wilt have it so, or no, blustering merchant in the prime of thine age;—whether thou wilt have it so, or no, hardened old man in the petrified state of thy moral conscience;—it is so: thou art ready to perish. Thy jeers cannot deliver thee; thy sarcasms about eternal wrath cannot quench it; and all thy contemptuous scorn and thine arrogant pride cannot evade thy doom, they do but hasten it. There are some persons, however, who are aware of their danger; to them I speak. They are fitly described by the Spirit of God in these words of the prophet: “The great trumpet shall be blown, and they shall come which were ready to perish.” Having passed through this anguish myself, I think I can describe, from experience, what some of you are now suffering.
You are ready to perish, in the first place, because you feel sure that you will perish. You did not think so once, but you do now. Once, you could afford to put away the thought, with a laugh, as a matter which might, or might not, be true; but, anyhow, it did not much concern you. But, now, you feel that you will be lost as surely as if it could be demonstrated to you by logic. In fact, the divine logic of the law has thundered it into your soul, and you know it. You feel it to be certain that you shall, ere long, be driven from the presence of God with that terrible sentence, “Depart, ye cursed.” If any unbeliever should tell you that there is no wrath to come, you would reply, “There is, for I feel it is due to me. My conscience tells me that I am condemned already, and ere long I am quite certain to drink of the wormwood and the gall of the wrath of God.” You have signed your own death-warrant, you have put on the black cap, and condemned yourself; or, rather, you have pleaded guilty before your Judge, you have said, “Guilty, my Lord;” and now you think you see before your eye the scaffold, and yourself ready to be executed. You feel it to be so sure that you even anticipate the judgment day; you dreamed of it, the other night, and you thought you heard the trumpet of the archangel opening all the graves, and wakening all the dead. You have already, in imagination, stood before the bar of God; you feel your sentence to be so certain that conscience has read it over in your hearing, and anticipated its terrors. You are among those who are ready to perish, so permit me to say that I am glad you have come here, for this is the very spot where God delights to display his pardoning grace. He is ready to save those who are thus ready to perish. Those who write themselves down as lost are the special objects of our Savior’s mission of mercy, for “the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.”
You are ready to perish, in another sense, for you feel as if your perishing was very near. You are like the dying man who gasps for breath, and thinks that each gasp must be his last; his pulse is feeble, his tongue is dry with feverish heat, the clammy sweat is on his brow. The valley of the shadow of death casts its gloomy shade on his pale cheeks, and he feels that he must soon die. Is it not thus that some of you feel just now? You feel that you are coming near to the wrath of God. I have known the day when, as I lay down to rest, I dreaded the thought that, perhaps, I should never awake in this world; or, at mid-day, I have walked in the fields, and wondered that the earth did not open, and swallow me up. A terrible noise was in my ears; my soul was tossed to and fro; I longed to find a refuge, but there seemed to be none; while ever ringing in my ears were the words, “The wrath to come!” “The wrath to come!” “The wrath to come! “Oh, how vividly is the wrath to come pictured before the eyes of the awakened sinner! He does not look upon it as a thing that is to come in ten, twelve, or twenty years, but as a thing that may be before long, yea, even today. He looks upon himself as ready to perish because his final overthrow appears to be so close. I am glad if any of you are in this plight, for God does not thus alarm men unless he has purposes of mercy concerning them, and designs for their good. He has made you fear you are perishing that you may have no perishing to fear. He has brought it home to you in this life that he may remove it for ever from you in the life that is to come. He has made you tremble now that you may not tremble then. He has put before you these dreadful things that, as with a fiery finger, they may point you to Christ, the only refuge, and, as with a thundering voice, they may cry to you, as the angels cried to Lot, “Escape for thy life, look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed.”
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
