USE OR APPLICATION - Claim of Those Who Never Heard The Gospel On Our Compassion 4/6

 

A word of exhortation to unbelievers and also to believers.

Use Third.  A word of exhortation to you who have not closed with the terms of the gospel, and also to you who have—to believers and to unbelievers.

1. To unbelievers.  Be persuaded to receive the message of the gospel kindly, believingly, into your hearts; it is the best news you can send back to heaven, as a gratulatory return, for the glad tidings that the gospel brings from thence.  Thy embracing Christ preached to thee in the gospel, will be as wel­come news to heaven, I can tell thee, as the tidings of Christ and salvation through him, can be to thee. ‘There is joy in heaven’ at the conversion of a sinner. Heaven soon rings of this.  The angels that sang Christ into the world, will not want a song when he is received into thy heart; for he came into the world for this end.  Christ descended when he came into the world, but now he ascends.  That was an act of his hu­miliation, this of his exaltation.  The highest created throne that God can sit in, is the soul of a believer. No wonder then, that Christ calls all his friends to joy with him at a soul’s return to him and reception of him, Luke 15:9.  What joy is now in heaven upon this occasion, we may collect from the joy it drew from Christ when on earth.  It was some great good news that could wring a smile then from Christ, or tune his spirit into a joyful note, who was ‘a man of sorrows,’ and indeed came into the world to be so.  Yet when his disciples whom he had sent forth to preach the gospel, returned with news of some victorious success of their labours, ‘in that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said, I thank thee, O Father,’ Luke 10:21.  Of all the hours of his life, that is the hour wherein Christ would express his joy; which, with the care of the Spirit to record this passage in the history of Christ’s life, shows that Christ had an especial design in that expression of his joy at that time.  And what could it be, but to let us know how much his heart was set upon this work of saving souls? and that, when he should be gone to heaven, if we meant to send any joyful news to him thither, it should be of the prosperous and victorious success the gospel hath over our hearts.  This, this which could make him rejoice in the midst of all his sorrows here on earth, must needs be more joyous to him in heaven now, where he hath no bitterness from his own sufferings—which are all healed, past, and gone—to mingle with the joy of this news.  And, if the kind reception of the gospel be such joyful news to him, you may easily conceive how distasteful the rejecting of it is to him.  As he rejoiced in spirit to hear the gospel prevailed; so he cannot but be angry when it meets with a repulse from the unbe­lieving world.  We find, Luke 14:21 ‘the master of the house’— that is Christ—‘angry,’ when his ser­vants, sent to invite the guests—that is, preach the gospel —return with a denial from those that were bidden (for so their mannerly excuses were interpreted by Christ), yea, so angry, that he claps a fearful doom upon them—‘not one of those which were bidden shall taste of my supper,’ ver. 24.  God can least bear any contempt cast upon his grace.  The Jews, though they had many grievous calamities which befell them for their idolatries and other sins, yet never any like that which the rejecting Christ brought upon them. Under those they relented, but under this they hard­ened.  They would not come when the supper was on the table; and therefore the cloth is drawn, and they go supperless to bed, and die in their sins.  While they shut the door of their hearts against Christ, this padlock, as I may so call it, of judiciary impenitence is fastened to it.  Christ needs take no other revenge on a soul for its refusing him, to make it miserable to the height, than to condemn such a one to have its own desire.  Christ thou wilt not, Christ therefore thou shalt not have.  O unhappy soul thou! that hast offers of Christ, but diest without Christ!  Thou goest with thy full lading to damnation.  None sink so deep in hell, as those that fall into it with a stumble at Christ.  That gospel which brings now good news, will, when thou shalt have a repetition sermon of it at the great day, bring the heaviest tidings with it that ever thy ears heard.