I REMEMBER a Gospel meeting in my native town. We had been inviting the people in the neighborhood of the Hall to come in and hear the word of God, and among some who responded was a man who sat like a surprised listener until the preaching was over; when, waiting for nothing else, he got up and ran, and did not stop until he had reached his house. When asked why he had run away from the Gospel like that, he said, “God is in that place.” But would he have run away if he had believed John 3:1616For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)? I can understand a man running away from Sinai, but if he had realized the meaning of the words, “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son,” would he have fled?
And yet this fear of God must precede the knowledge of this great love. I know that from my own experience. When I was a boy, there hung in our home a Scripture text. There were only four words in it, but those four words fastened themselves on my mind and made me tremble with fear at the most unexpected times.
They were, “THOU GOD SEEST ME.” I was afraid as I thought of them, and wished sometimes that there was no God. I am sure that I could have repeated John 3:1616For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16) correctly in those days, and yet I was afraid of God. Why should any boy or man, girl or woman be afraid of God and of His eyes of love? Ah, that’s the question, for it is certain that the man who ran away from the Gospel preaching and I who trembled when I thought of God and His all-seeing eye, were not alone in this. Why? It is a searching question, and the answer was, I knew that I was a sinner and that God was holy, and that man knew and felt this too; and the heart of the sinner “which is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked” is enmity against God and has no desire to meet Him in any way; and in this all are alike, there is no difference.
But do I tremble now as I think of God’s all-seeing eye? No, I do not, for now I know that He loved me and gave His Son for my salvation. He who saw all has forgiven all, and thus He has won my heart and I love Him because He first loved me. His perfect love to me has cast out all fear from my heart.
The Bible that tells us of God’s love to men also tells us, and that just as plainly, of men’s hatred of God and of His Son, whom He sent to be their Saviour. The Lord Jesus said, “They have both seen and hated both Me and My Father,” and, “They hated Me without a cause.” These are the two facts that stand out above all others in the Bible. God loves men and men hate God, and these two facts show what a unique place man has in God’s creation.
I have met men who believed they were nothing more than beasts—cleverer, of course, than the rest of the animal kingdom through the kindly efforts of a mysterious force which they call Evolution, but still beasts to live and die and be forgotten; but one thing is certain, the beasts are not enmity against God, they do not hate Him; and another thing is certain, there has been no revelation of God’s love to them, though He feeds the young lions and cares for the sparrows. It is men that God has loved,
“For man, O miracle of grace!
For man the Saviour bled.”
When this great fact gets into a man’s heart, it revolutionizes his whole life. It changes his thoughts and feelings towards God, first of all. The hatred is cast out of his heart, and he is reconciled to God by the death of His Son. Instead of running from God, it makes him run to Him; for what could be so attractive as the love of God as seen in Jesus? If God so loved us, why should we hide with fear from Him? It is this wonderful love which makes us trust Him wholly.
I knew an old man in the North of England who was not overburdened with this world’s goods, indeed he was a poor man, an old age pensioner, but a happy one. We were holding an open-air meeting, and he stepped into the ring to speak. What had he to tell us “Friends,” he said, “it’s just fifty years since I came out of jail first time. The W―s got hold of me, and I’m not going to say anything against them, they were very kind to me, but they never told me that Jesus died for me, and I was very ignorant. They told me to be a good lad, but I could not manage it; it was too big a job for me; and it was seventeen years before I found out that God loved me. Seventeen years! I’ve come here to tell you what it took me seventeen years to find out. God loves you, my friends, God loves you. It was this that changed things for me, and it will do the same for you.”
When eighteen years old, that man, then a poor pit lad, unable to read or write, was condemned to five years penal servitude for manslaughter. In defending a friend in a drunken row, he had killed a man. In his northern prison, the prisoners talked about their chances of heaven, and they were unanimous in declaring that Geordie had no chance at all; he had killed a man; his case was hopeless. And he, poor fellow, believed them, and thought that there was nothing but a life of sin for him and hell at the end of it. Until, during his last term in jail, the truth reached him, that “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” What a revelation that was to that poor ignorant pitman! It changed his life and filled him with an enthusiasm for the Gospel that burned in his soul to the end of his days. I know of no one in the North of England who preached it more persistently than he, and there will be many in heaven as a result of the testimony of rough old Geordie M―.
And hear the story of another man in the same northern district, whose life was transformed by the same wonderful love. He cursed the Gospel preachers who came into his street to tell the glad tidings to the people. He sat at his window and cursed them while they preached. “J―, my man,” said one of them, “God loves you.” Those words went home to his miserable heart and the next night that hardened sinner turned in to the service in the nearby Gospel hall and there was saved. I met him after three years of Christian life. He had been away from home for the weekend preaching the Gospel that had saved him. It was the first weekend that he had been away from home since his conversion. He was telling me this and he said, “Before I was saved, my wife used to pray that I might break my neck, I was such a drunken brute, but when I came home this morning after being away since Saturday, she said, ‘J―, you’ll never have to go away again, this has been the most miserable weekend I’ve ever spent.’” Yes, that is what the Gospel of God’s great love can do for a man, it changes him, and it changes his home as well.