Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1278
“Come now, and let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” Isaiah 1:18.
IT is the great joy of our heart that we do not labor in vain nor spend our strength for nothing. God is calling out from the congregations which gather here a people unto Himself who shall show forth His praise. Our heart is filled with adoring joy while we find company after company coming forward and saying, “We have found the Lord, because the Lord, in mercy, has found us.” Unto the name of the Ever Merciful be praise forever and ever because His hand is stretched out, still, and the Spirit of the living God is not restrained among us! Still there is a bass to this music—there are some, and these not a few, who remain unblest where others are saved—this plot of ground is rained upon and another is not rained upon! The sun shines and hearts, like wax, are melted, but other hearts, like clay, are hardened.
This last and saddest of results has happened to some for whom we hoped better things. The almost persuaded have, in fact, been our peculiar trial. Some of you, my Hearers, have remained under the sound of the Gospel now for years, not without impression, but without conversion. The arrows of conviction have wounded your feelings, but they have not slain your sins. Ah, how many have disappointed their best friends in this respect! They have manifested the most hopeful appearance at times. Their tears have glittered like the dewdrops of the summer’s morning but, alas, their goodness has been like the morning cloud and the early dew in another respect, for they have vanished away and they are as dry and graceless as ever they were.
Nor is this all. They are even worse than they were before, for they have added to their sin—they have increased their responsibility, they have diminished the sensitiveness of their conscience—and the probabilities are daily increasing that they will perish in their sin! How terrible that they should go from the invitation of the Gospel to the condemnation of the Judgment Seat—and that after having looked God’s minister of mercy in the face! They will have to confront the Greater Minister of Justice, from whose face they will entreat the rocks and hills to hide them. Oh that these would come to their senses and reason with themselves! Then would they listen to the call of the text which invites them to talk with their Lord and receive His Grace.
Among these persons there are some who, in their hearts, venture to lay the blame of their present condition upon God. They do not exactly say so, but they mean it. They would tremble to make the accusation in set terms. They would even think it blasphemy to do so! But this is the real intent of their thoughts. They complain that they cannot find peace with God, though they claim that they have used all means within their power and have been really earnest and prayerful. They go to hear the Gospel and love to hear it. They would be very sorry if they were not able to enter the place where their favorite minister preaches, for he affords them much delight and even when he rebukes them, they admire his boldness.
But though they have heard the Gospel and have heard it continuously, and claim to have heard it with good intent, yet no happy result has come to them. They have heard and their souls do not live! They remain as they were, dead in trespasses and sin. It is not their fault, so they say, and we know, therefore, whose fault it must be! They have even prayed for salvation and have not found it. Their chambers can bear witness that sometimes they have bowed the knee in earnest supplication and have cried to God—and this not once or twice, but many times—and yet they still remain in their sins as undecided, unregenerate and unforgiven as ever.
“Surely,” say they, “this is a strange thing, that hearing the Gospel has not blessed us and that crying unto God has not brought us an answer of peace! What can be the cause?” It is obvious that something hinders. What can it be? The
promises of God cannot fail! Why, then, are these seekers left in the dark? Some of these people are not anxious to know too much and they will not be pleased when I state the true reason for their continuing without hope. They impute it to the Sovereignty of God, or to some withholding of Infinite Love. They put the reason into some doctrinal shape or other and quote a text or two so as to look orthodox, but their meaning comes to this—it is God’s fault that they are unsaved! It is certainly none of theirs.
I wish that this bold way of stating their secret thought may convince them of the falsehood of it. At any rate, to such I speak! Listen to me, O you who declare that you would gladly be saved but cannot be! O you who say that you have been in earnest about salvation but God has not been moved by your entreaties! He bids you come near and reason with Him and end this quibbling! Come, now, and settle this matter and end the dispute! It is not God who shuts you out of mercy! He declares, on the contrary, that as far as He is concerned, He is a God ready to be gracious. And though your sins are as scarlet they shall be white as snow, though they are red like crimson they shall be as wool!