“No,” says one, “it never will be.” My dear friend, if you are so confident as that you are the person about whom I am most afraid. I recollect one who used to pray among us but we had to put him out of the church for evil living; and there was one of our members who said that night, “If that man is not a child of God I am not one myself.” I said “My dear brother, do not talk like that. I would not pit my soul against the soul of any man, for I do know a little of myself, but I do not know other men as well as I know myself.” I am very much afraid that neither of the two men I have mentioned was a child of God; by their speech they seemed to be Christians, but their acts were not like those of God’s people. It does not do for us to talk as that man did but to pray to the Lord, “Hold thou me up and I shall be safe.” That is the proper prayer for us; or else it may happen even to us as happened to them, and we may forsake our own Friend and our father’s Friend.
Now what reasons can we possibly have for forsaking Christ? We ought to do nothing for which we cannot give good reasons. I have known persons very properly forsake their former friends because they have themselves become new creatures in Christ Jesus, and they have rightly and wisely given up the acquaintances with whom they used to sin. They cannot go now to the house where everything is contrary to their feelings. But it is not so with Christ. Some so called friends drag a man down, lower him, injure him, impose upon him, and at last he is obliged to let them go; but we cannot say that of Christ. His friendship has drawn us up, helped us, sanctified us, elevated us; we owe everything to that friendship. We cannot have a reason therefore for forsaking this Friend. I have known some to outgrow an acquaintance or friend. They really have not been able to continue to have common views and sympathies, for while their friend has remained in the mire they have risen into quite different men by reason of education and other influences; but we can never outgrow Christ. That is not possible; and the more we grow in a right sense, the more we shall become like him. A man who has been the friend of our father and of ourselves is the very man to have still as a friend, because he probably understands all about the family difficulties and the family troubles, and he also understands us. Why, he nursed us when we were children and therefore he knows most about us. I remember that when lying sore sick, I had a letter from a kind old gentleman who said that he had that day celebrated his eightieth birthday, and the choicest friend he had at his dinner table was the old family doctor. He said, “He has attended to me so long that he thoroughly knows my constitution, he is nearly as old as myself; but the first time I was ill I had him, and he has attended me now for forty years. Once” he said, “when I had a severe attack of gout, I was tempted to try some very famous man who very nearly killed me; and until I got back to my old friend I never was really well again.” So he wrote to advise me to get some really good physician, and let him know my constitution, and to stick to him and never go off to any of the patent medicines or the quacks of the day. Oh, but there is a great deal of truth in that in a spiritual sense! With the utmost reverence we may say that the Lord Jesus Christ has been our family Physician. Did he not attend my father in all his sicknesses, and my grandfather too? And he knows the ins and outs of my constitution;—he knows my ways good and bad, and all my sorrows; and therefore I do not go to anyone else for relief; and I advise you also to keep to Jesus Christ, do not forsake him. If you ever are tempted to go aside even for a little while, I pray that you may have grace enough to come back quickly, and to commit yourself again to him, and never go astray again. There is the blessing of having one who is wise, one who is tried, one whose sympathy has been tested, one who has become, as it were, one of your family, one who has taken your whole household to his heart and made it part and parcel of himself. Such a Friend to your own soul and to your father’s soul forsake not.
Do not forsake him, dear friends, because I almost tremble to say it—you will want him some day. Even if you would never need him in the future, you ought not to forsake him. I do not quite like that verse of the hymn at the end of our hymn-book—
Ashamed of Jesus! yes, I may,
When I’ve no guilt to wash away;
No tear to wipe, no good to crave,
No fears to quell, no soul to save.
No, I may not; when all my guilt is gone I shall not be ashamed of Jesus. When I am in heaven and need no more the pardon of sin, I certainly shall not be ashamed of him who brought me there; no, but I shall glory in him more than ever. Your friendship to Christ, and mine, ought not to depend upon what we are going to get out of him. We must love him now for what he is, for all that he has already done, and for his own blessed person and personal beauties which every day should hold fast our love and bind us in chains of affection to him.
But suppose you do think of forsaking Christ, where are you going to get another friend to take his place? You must have a friend of some sort; who is going to sit in Christ’s chair? Whose portrait is to be hung up in the old familiar place when the old Friend is discarded? To whom are you going to tell your griefs, and from whom will you expect to receive help in time of need? Who will be with you in sickness? Who will be with you in the hour of death? Ah! there is no other who can ever fill the vacuum which the absence of Christ would make. Therefore, never forsake him.
III. Now I must close with the consequent resolve about which I can say very little, as my time has gone.
Let this be your resolve by his grace, instead of forsaking him you will cling to him more closely than ever; you will own him when it brings you dishonor to do so; you will trust him when he wounds you, for “faithful are the wounds of a friend;” you will serve him when it is costly to do it, when it involves self-denial; resolved that by the help of his ever-blessed Spirit without whom you can do nothing, you will never in any sort of company conceal the fact that you are a Christian. Never under any possible circumstances wish to be otherwise than a servant of such a Master, a friend of such a Lord. Come now dear young friends who are getting cool towards Christ, and elder friends to whom religion is becoming monotonous, come to your Lord once more and ask him to bind you with cords, even with cords to the horns of the altar. You have had time to count the cost of all Egypt’s treasure; forego it and forswear it once for all. But the riches of Christ you can never count; so come and take him again to be your All-in-all.
Those about to be baptized will feel I trust—as we shall when we look on—and say each man and woman for himself or herself—
‘Tis done! The great transaction’s done:
I am my Lord’s, and he is mine.
Nail your colors to the mast. Bear in your body the marks of the Lord Jesus. Ay, let everyone of us who has been baptized into Christ feel that our whole body bears the water-mark, for we have been “buried with him by baptism into death.” It was not for the putting off of the filthiness of the flesh, but as a declaration that we were dead to the world and quickened into newness of life in Christ Jesus our Savior. So let it be with you too, dear friends, as you follow your Lord through the water; cling to him, cleave to him: “Thine own friend and thy father’s friend, forsake not.” May God add his blessing for our Lord Jesus Christ’s sake! Amen.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
