Oh my dear hearers, I feel so glad I have such a gospel as this to preach to you. If you have not received it, I pray God the Holy Ghost to send it home to you. It is so simple that men cannot believe it is true. If I were to bid you take off your shoes and run from here to York and you would be saved, why you would do it at once, and the road to York would be thronged; but when it is nothing but the soul-quickening words, “Believe and live,” it is too easy for your proud hearts to do. If I told you to go and earn a thousand pounds and endow a church with it, and you would be saved, you would think the price very cheap; but when I say, “Trust Christ and be saved,” you cannot do that—it is too simple. Ah, madness of the human heart! strange, strange, besotted sin, when God makes the path plain, men will not run in it for that very reason; and when he sets the door wide open, that is the very reason they will not come in. They say if the door was half a-jar and they had to push it open, they would come in. God has made the gospel too plain and too simple to suit proud hearts. May God soften proud hearts, and make you receive the Saviour.
IV. Now I come to, my last point, which I have already trenched upon, and that is by way of EXHORTATION.
Poor sinner, seven years ago you were saying just what you are saying now, and when seven more years shall have some, you will be saying just the same. Seven years ago you said, “I would trust Christ, but I do not feel as I ought.” Do you feel any better now? And when another seven years are come you will feel just as you do now. You will say, “I would come, but I do not feel fit—I do not feel my need enough.” Ay, and it will keep going on for ever, till you go down to the pit of hell, saying as you go down, “I do not feel my need enough,” and then the lie will be detected, and you will say, “It never said in the Word of God, ‘I might come to Christ when I felt my need enough,’ but it said ‘Whosoever will, let him come.’ I would not come as I was, therefore I am justly cast away.” Hear me, sinner, when I bid thee come to Jesus as thou art, and give thee these reasons for it.
In the first place, it is a very great sin not to feel your guilt, and not to mourn over it, but then it is one of the sins that Jesus Christ atoned for on the tree. When his heart was pierced,; he paid the ransomed price for your hard heart. Oh! sinner, if Christ had only died that we might be forgiven of other sins except our hard hearts, we should never go to heaven for we have, all of us, even we who have believed, committed that great sin of being impenitent before him. If He had not died to wash that sin away as well as every other sin, where should we be? The fact that thou canst not weep, nor sorrow as thou wouldst, is an addition to thy guilt; but did not Christ wash you from that sin, black though it be? Come to him, he is able to save you even from this.
Again, come to Jesus, because it is He only who can give you that heart for which you seek. If men were not to come to Christ till they feel as they should feel, they would never come at all. I will freely confess that if I had never trusted Christ until I felt I might have trusted him, I never could I trusted him, and could not trust him now. For there are times with me when after I have preached the gospel as plainly as I could, l have returned to my own chamber and my heart has been dead, lumpish, lying like a log within my spirit, and I have thought then if I could not come to Christ as a sinner, I could not come anyhow else. If I found in the text one word before that word “sinner”—”Jesus Christ came into the world to save”—and then an adjective, and then “sinners,” I should be lost. It is just because the text says, “sinners” just as they are, that “Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners,” that I can hope he came to save me. If it had said Jesus Christ came into the world to save soft-hearted sinners, I should have said, “Lord, my heart is like adamant.” If it had said Jesus came into the world to save weeping sinners, I should have said, “Lord, though I press my eyelids, I could not force a tear.” If it had said Jesus came into the world to save sinners that felt their need of him, I should say, “I do not feel the need of it; I know I do need thee, but I do not feel it.” But, Lord, thou camest to save sinners, and I am saved. I trust thou camest to save me, and here I am, sink or swim, I rest on thee. If I perish, I will perish trusting thee; and if I must be lost, in thy hands it shall be; for in my own hands I will not be in any respect, or in any degree whatever. I come to that cross, and under that cross I stand; “thy perfect righteousness my beauty is—my glorious dress.”
Come sinner to Christ, because he can soften thine heart, and thou canst never soften it thyself. He is exalted on high to give repentance and remission of sins; not merely the remission, but the repentance too. He gives his grace not merely to those who seek it, but even to those that seek it not. He gives repentance not to those who repent themselves, but to those who cannot repent. And to those who are saying, “Lord I would, but cannot feel;” “I would, but cannot weep;” I say Christ is just the Saviour for you—a Christ that begins at the beginning and does not want you to begin—a Christ that shall go to the end, and won’t want you to finish—a Christ that does not ask you to say Alpha, and then he will be the Omega: but he will be both Alpha and Omega. Christ, that is the beginning and the end, the first and the last. The plain gospel is just this, “Look unto me, and be ye saved all the ends of the earth.” “But, Lord, I cannot see anything.” “Look unto me.” “But, Lord, I do not feel.” “Look unto me.” “But, Lord, I cannot say I feel my need.” “Look unto me, not unto thyself; all this is looking to thyself.” “But, Lord, I feel sometimes that I could do anything, but a week passes, and then I am hard of heart.” “Look unto me.” “But Lord, I have often tried.” “Try no more, look unto me.” “Oh, but Lord thou knowest.” “Yes. I know all things. I know everything, all thine iniquity and thy sins, but look unto me.” “Oh, but often, Lord, when I have heard a sermon I feel impressed, yet it is like the morning cloud and the early dew; it passes away.” “Look unto me,” not to thy feelings or thy impressions, look unto me.” “Well,” says one, “but will that really save me, just looking to Christ?” My dear soul, if that does not save thee I am not saved. The only way in which I have been saved, and the only gospel I can find in the Bible is looking to Christ. “But if I go on in sin,” says one. But you cannot go on in sin; your looking to Christ will cure you that habit of sin. “But if my heart remains hard?” It cannot remain hard; you will find that looking to Christ will keep you from having a hard heart. It is just as we sing in the penitential hymn of gratitude,—
“Dissolved by thy mercy I fall to the ground,
And weep to the praise of the mercy I’ve found.”
You will never feel as you ought until you do not feel what you ought; you will never come to Christ until you do not feel that you can come. Come as thou art; come in all thy poverty, and stubbornness, and hardness, just as you are now, take Christ to be your all in all. Sound your songs ye angels, smite your golden harps ye redeemed ones; there are sinners snatched from hell to-day; there are men who have trusted Christ this morning. Though they scarecly know it, their sins are all forgiven; their feet are on the rock; the new song shall soon be in their mouth, and their goings shall be established. Farewell, ye brethren, turn to God this morning; God shall keep you, and you shall see his face in glory everlasting. Amen.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
