“And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered.”—Joel 2:32.
Vengeance was in full career. The armies of divine justice had been called forth for war: “They shall run like mighty men; they shall climb the wall like men of war.” They had invaded and devastated the land, and turned the land from being like the garden of Eden into a desolate wilderness. All faces gathered blackness: the people were “much pained” The sun itself was dim, the moon was dark, and the stars withdrew themselves: the earth quaked, and the heavens trembled. At such a dreadful time, when we might least have expected it, between the peals of thunder and the flashes of lightning, was heard this gentle word, “It shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered.” Let us carefully read the passage: “And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the Lord come. And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered.” In the worst times that can ever happen, there is still salvation for men. When day turns to night, and life becomes death, and the staff of life is broken, and the hope of man has fled, there still remains in God, in the person of his dear Son, deliverance to all those who will call upon the name of the Lord. We do not know what is to happen: reading the roll of the future, we prophesy dark things; but still this light shall always shine between the rifts of the cloud-wrack: “Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered.”
This passage was selected by the apostle at Pentecost to be set in its place as a sort of morning star of gospel times. When the Spirit was poured out upon the servants and the handmaids, and sons and daughters began to prophesy, it was clear that the wondrous time had come, which had been foretold so long before. Then Peter, as he preached his memorable sermon, told the people, “Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved”; thus giving a fuller and yet more evangelical meaning to the word “delivered.” “Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered” from sin, death and hell—shall, in fact, be so delivered as to be, in divine language, “saved”—saved from the guilt, the penalty, the power of sin, saved from the wrath to come. These gospel times are still the happy days in which “whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” In the Year of Grace we have reached a day and an hour in which “whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” To you at this moment is this salvation sent. The dispensation of immediate acceptance proclaimed at Pentecost has never ceased: its fulness of blessing has grown rather than diminshed. The sacred promise stands in all its certainty, fulness, and freeness: it has lost none of all its breadth and length: “Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
I have nothing to do to-night but to tell you over again the old, old story of infinite mercy come to meet infinite sin—of free grace come to lead free will into a better line of things—of God himself appearing to undo man’s ruin wrought by man, and to lift him up by a great deliverance. May the Holy Spirit graciously aid me while I shall talk to you very simply, thus:—
I. First, THERE IS SOMETHING ALWAYS WANTED. That something is deliverance, or “salvation.” It is always wanted. It is the requisite of man, wherever man is found. As long as there are men on the face of the earth, there will always be a need of salvation. I could wish that some of you had the instructive schooling which I received last Tuesday, when I was sitting to see enquirers. I had a very happy time in seeing a very large number of persons who had joyfully put their trust in Christ; but among them were some who could not trust—poor hearts, conscious of sin, though they did not think they were. These seemed bound hand and foot, shut up in the prison of despair, and darkened in heart. I tell you, I felt dismayed as they baffled me: I felt a fool as they refused to be comforted. I could do nothing for them so far as argument and persuasion were concerned. I could pray with them: I could also set them praying, and they did pray: but they were cases in which, unless the arm of God were revealed, I was as powerless with them as when a man stands weeping over the body of his dead wife, and would restore her to life even at the cost of his own life, and yet he could produce neither hearing nor motion. Dear friends, while we mingle only with those who are saved, we forget how much need there is still of a divine salvation. If we could go through London, into its dens and slums, we should think very differently of human need from what we do when we simply come from our own quiet domestic circle, and step into our pew and hear a sermon. The world is still sick and dying. The world is still corrupting and rotting. The world is a ship in which the water is rising fast, and the vessel is going down into the deep of destruction. God’s salvation is wanted as much to-day as when the spirit preached it in Noah’s day to the spirits in prison. God must step in, and bring deliverance, or there remains no hope.
Some want deliverance from present trouble. If you are in this need to-night through very sore distress, I invite you to take my text as your guide, and believe that “whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered.” Depend upon it, in any form of distress, physical, mental, or whatever it may be, prayer is wonderfully available. “Call upon me,” says God, “in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me.” If you are so down at the heel that your foot is on the bare pavement; if you have come to this place in bodily sickness, and feel as if you should die on the seat in which you sit; if there be no physician to help you, and no friend to stretch out a generous hand, call upon God, I beseech you. You have come to the end of men; you are now at the beginning of God. See whether your Maker will forget you. See whether the great, generous heart of God does not still beat tenderly towards the sorrowful and the afflicted. If I saw you lying wounded on a battle-field, bleeding to death, I would say, “Call upon God.” If I knew that you had not a house to go to, but must walk these streets all night, I would say, “Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered.” I will take the text in the broadest sense, and bid you, nay, command you, to test your good and gracious God in the day of your calamity.
This is true whenever you come into a position of deep personal distress, even though it should not be of a physical kind. When you do not know how to act, but are bewildered and at your wits’ end, when wave of trouble has followed wave of trouble till you are like the sailor in the storm who reels to and fro, and staggers like a drunken man; if now you cannot help yourself, because your spirit sinks and your mind fails, call upon God, call upon God, call upon God! Lost child in the wood, with the night fog thickening about you, ready to lie down and die, call upon your Father! Call upon God, thou distracted one; for “Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered.” In the last great day when all secrets are known, it will seem ridiculous that ever persons took to writing tales and romances; for the real stories of what God has done for those who cry to him are infinitely more surprising. If men and women could but tell in simple, natural language how God has come to their rescue in the hour of imminent distress, they would set the harps of heaven a-ringing with new melodies, and the hearts of saints on earth a-glowing with new love to God for his wonderful kindness to the children of men. Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness! Oh that we could abundantly utter the memory of his great goodness to ourselves in the night of our weeping!
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
