“COME; for all things are now ready.”
“Yet there is room!” Love, love eternal waits,
The Saviour sits within the pearly gates.
Come home, oh come!
Come, e’er it be too late.
“Yet there is room!” Still open stands the gate,
The gate of love―it is not yet too late,
Come home, oh come!
The grace of God receive.
Louder and sweeter sounds the loving call,
Come, lingerer, come―enter the festal hall.
Come home, oh come!
The love of God believe.
THE Servant sent forth by the Master of the house with the invitations to the Supper is none other than the Holy Spirit of God. The Apostles of the Lord who were the first preachers of this gospel were told by their Master to tarry in Jerusalem until He came, and when He did come, they “preached the gospel by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven.” The message is so wonderful and the work of filling God’s house so great and urgent, that it could not be committed to a lesser person. It is the Holy Ghost who has come into the world with an invitation to men from the Father and the Son. The first word of the invitation is COME. Consider the significance of that. It is not “Go work in My vineyard;” but “COME to My Supper.” It is a wonderful word, an evangelical word. It is a word that suits well the lips of the Father, who sent His Son to be the Saviour of the world; it suits well the lips of the Son who died that sinners might live; it suits well the lips of the Holy Ghost who has come into the world to compel hungry and sinful men to come to God’s Supper. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are saying, Come, The Triune God desire your company in their home forever; They are saying Come to you.
Do you understand the meaning of the word? That babe of six months understands it. If I can only put the right tone into my voice and the proper smile on my face, and hold out my hands to the little mite and say, “Come,” it answers at once. It cannot run to me, it cannot even say, “I will;” but it stretches out its arms and struggles to reach me. It knows what I mean. God is saying, “Come” to men, and behind the invitation there is the yearning of His love for them. He wills the death of none of them; He will cast out none who come in answer to His call; He will welcome them to His feast and bless them forever.
I was preaching the gospel in Leamington Spa. To the meetings came a man named Irons, and those who knew him were surprised to see him there.
He was well-known, a hardened sinner. Yes, with a heart as hard as his name. He had been a man of means and had married a lady who was well-to-do, but he had drunk and gambled both fortunes, and for some years his only homes had been prison and the common lodging-house. But he came to the meetings, and one night he told me that he was saved. Saved! George Irons saved! I had my doubts, so unbelieving was I. However he came to see me, and what a time we had together! “Tell me” I said, “how this came about; are you saved because you made up your mind to give up the drink and lead a decent life?” “No,” he said, “it wasn’t that. While you were preaching, it seemed as if God was stretching out His arms to me, and saying, ‘Come, I’ll receive you just as you are.’” That is it. That is what “Come” means. I could doubt the man no more; he had heard the voice of the Saviour God calling him from his misery and sin to home and feast and love, and to God Himself. And the same voice is calling you. Come, Come, COME.
The late Canon Fleming in his Autobiography has told an appealing story of the death of the Duke of Clarence, the elder son of the late King Edward VII, who was then Prince of Wales. The young duke was lying at Sandringham. His mother, the Princess of Wales, was sitting at his side, when he suddenly opened his eyes and said, “Who is that calling for me?” She answered him, “It is Jesus calling you, dear.” Those were the last words he uttered, and hers were the last words he heard, for in a few minutes his life quietly closed. She rose from his bedside and saw his diary lying on a table nearby; it was open to the date when first he took the communion, and there she read,
“Just as I am, without one plea,
But that Thy blood was shed for me;
And that Thou bidst me come to Thee;
O Lamb of God, I come”
“I could not doubt,” said the future Queen of England “that dear Eddie had really come.”
The invitation comes to everyone, to the highest and the least, prince and pauper, and all who come are welcomed alike, for in God’s sight there is no difference between royal duke and homeless drunkard, no difference between George Irons, the Duke of Clarence, and you and me.
It is strange that such an invitation should have failed in its appeal to those favored people to whom it was first sent; but so it was. They all with one consent began to make excuse. They were not rude about it; not one of them said, as I heard a man say to whom a gospel tract was offered in a Scottish express train, “I call that a bit of― impertinence; why can’t people keep their― religion to themselves?” No, they were not like that, it was with the greatest possible politeness that they rejected the invitation, but they rejected it all the same, they deliberately and finally rejected it.
One had his land, another had his oxen, and a third had his wife; and there was nothing wrong in these; they were all legitimate possessions, and the men who had them were evidently shrewd, industrious and sociable men. What was wrong then? Their own interests were more important in their eyes than the great Supper; they were so completely engrossed with what they possessed that they could not even consider the grace of the invitation sent to them by the Master of the House. He had thought of them and provided His feast for them in vain, His kindness was slighted and His servant turned from their doors with a blank refusal; they could manage very well without the Supper, thank you! Did the Lord err in drawing this picture? Most certainly not. He reads the hearts of all and knows their motives and ways, and He described in the parable the folly and sinful independence of God and His blessing of which thousands are guilty. It may have described the folly of the Jew to whom the gospel was first sent, but it also describes the attitude of thousands of easy-placed, well-to-do men and women of the world today. They would prefer to have nothing to do with God; they will take His benefits, but they do not desire His saving grace; the gospel Supper has no attraction for them; temporalities are more to them than eternal verities. They have no time for God. “I have bought,” “I have bought,” “I have married.” Their own activities and achievements are everything to them, and not one of them says, “I have sinned” as did the prodigal son; and dares anyone to say that they will have another opportunity in another life? The Master of the house was angry and said, “None of those men that were bidden shall taste of My Supper.” God’s word to sinners is “Come”; if that word is rejected it changes to “Depart.” The “larger hope” that some have preached is a delusion and a lie.
Let every man and woman of us hear this word of invitation, this great word, Come, and heed it, and respond to it without delay. It is God that is calling.
“Oh, be swift my soul, to answer Him; be jubilant, my feet.”
It is God who calls; it is God who says Come.