Finally, we have here the draught of living water. Did you ever think
why our text puts 'should not perish' first? Is it not because, unless
we put our trust in Him, we shall certainly perish, and because,
therefore, that certainty of perishing must be averted before we can
have 'everlasting life'?
Now I am not going to enlarge on these two solemn expressions,
'perishing' and 'everlasting life.' I only say this: men do not need to
wait until they die before they 'perish.' There are men and women here
now who are dead—dead while they live, and when they come to die, the
perishing, which is condemnation and ruin, will only be the making
visible, in another condition of life, of what is the fact to-day. Dear
brethren, you do not need to die in order to perish in your sins, and,
blessed be God, you can have everlasting life before you die. You can
have it now, and there is only one way to have it, and that is to lay
hold of Him who is the Life. And when you have Jesus Christ in your
heart, whom you will be sure to have if you trust Him, then you will
have life—life eternal, here and now, and death will only make manifest
the eternal life which you had while you were alive here, and will
perfect it in fashions that we do not yet know anything about.
Only remember, as I have been trying to show you, the order that runs
through this text. Remember the order of these last words, and that we
must first of all be delivered from eternal and utter death, before we
can be invested with the eternal and absolute life.
Now, dear brethren, I dare say I have never spoken to the great
majority of you before; it is quite possible I may never speak to any
of you again. I have asked God to help me to speak so as that souls
should be drawn to the Saviour. And I beseech you now, as my last word,
that you would listen, not to me, but to Him. For it is He that says to
us, 'God so loved the world, that He gave His Son, that
whosoever'—'whosoever,' a blank cheque, like the M. or N. of the
Prayer-book, or the A. B. of a schedule; you can put your own name in
it—'that whosoever believeth on Him shall not perish, but have'—here,
now—'everlasting life.'