The Gospel was being preached with much blessing, and two of the children of a godly widow had been converted, but the eldest son was not. Every evening he was at the meetings, and many of his companions turned to the Lord. A few days after the meetings closed, those young converts sang a hymn together, while he sat still, downright miserable. His mother said to him, “Look at them; how happy they are since they have known the Lord, but your sins hinder you.”
“Mother, don’t speak to me. I’ll come to it by and by, not now. I don’t want to be miserable now.”
“But, son,” she said, “not every man will have a dying bed.”
That night a fire broke out, and the house was burned to its foundation; and the next morning that Christian mother and her unbelieving son were found under the ruins, dead. If you wait for a dying bed, you may be too late. You know not what may happen tonight. We live in days when thousands of people are ushered from time to eternity. If you die in your sins, you have not been truly happy here, and you will never be happy in eternity.
But how can you get rid of your sins? You must get the deep conviction you are lost.
I remember, thirty years ago, when for the first time I heard the gospel. Oh, after that I felt like Peter, and wept bitterly. I ran through the streets of London, weeping; I cared not what people thought of me. And then in my room, a power I knew not forced me to my knees. I had never knelt before. I know not how long it was, but the whole room seemed full of light, and my life, oh, it came out before me, seen from my earliest childhood! God showed me my ruined case, and that I could be drawn out of my ruin and saved from hell.
Someone once said to me, “You can’t tell me there is a hell, or where it is.”
“Yes,” I said, “it is at the end of your life, Christless soul. Do you think, because you don’t believe it, God will withhold His purpose? He will do everything He has said in His precious word.”
But I saw my lost condition, my ruin, before I could gaze on Calvary. I saw in the midst of the Throne, the Lamb of God for sinners slain; and I cried to Him in the deep need of my soul, “Lord Jesus, save me.”
Not a single soul who comes so is cast out. “Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I WILL give you rest” (Matthew 11:2828Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. (Matthew 11:28)). Oh, what rest! What peace through believing! I have met many who have said, “Oh, I wish I had not done this or that”; but never one who said, “I wish I had not come to the Lord Jesus Christ.” We speak from experience.
God looks down on you, dear reader, and greets you with grace. Oh, the activity of Divine love! But this grace can only be accepted when you bow to the Holy Spirit’s witness that what God says about you is true. “All have sinned.” Some have many sins, some few; but think not with only few sins, you can enter heaven any more than one with many.
A man once came to me and said, “I liked to hear you tonight.” I said, “What about your sin?” (I had been preaching about man’s lost estate, and that without repentance there is no true forgiveness). He looked up, and said, “I don’t know what you are talking about. I have never done anything to reproach myself with.”
I said, “Have you ever called out ‘O God’?” “Yes.”
“Then you have called on the Name of God in vain. That is sin. Have you ever told a lie?”
“I don’t know who has not.”
“Then you have sinned.”
“Oh, well, if it is sin to tell an untruth, I have done it.”
“Have you ever been drunk?”
“Well, sometimes I have.”
“Will you ever say again you have not sinned?”
Oh, how he woke up! Dear reader, the best man cannot stand before God. He is full of the leprosy of sin, and must be cleansed. But how can a man who is guilty before God get rid of his sins?
Oh, “peace unto you!” The beloved Son of God has made peace by the blood of His Cross (Col. 1:2020And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven. (Colossians 1:20)); and if anyone longs to be saved, the blessed Lord Jesus has put that longing in your wretched unsatisfied heart; and will fill you with joy and peace in believing.
Do you acknowledge you are lost? Do you believe the Lord Jesus, on the Cross, died for your sins? Oh yes, I believe the Lord Jesus died for my sins! Then you need not die for your sins. Do you believe He bore the judgment in your stead on Calvary’s cross? Then you are free.
“The sinner who believes is free,
Can say ‘The Saviour died for me’;
Can point to the atoning blood,
And say ‘This made my peace with God.’”
P. S.