A little skiff of a boat comes athwart the bows of a six thousand
ton steamer, with triple-expansion engines, that can make twenty
knots an hour. What will become of the skiff, do you think? You can
thwart God's purpose about yourself, but the great purpose goes on
and on. And 'Who hath hardened himself against Him and prospered?'
You can thwart the purpose, but it is kicking against the pricks.
Consider what you lose when you will have nothing to do with that
divine counsel of salvation. Consider not only what you lose, but
what you bring upon yourself; how you bind your sin upon your
hearts; how you put out your hands, and draw disease and death
nearer to yourselves; how you cannot turn away from, or be
indifferent to, the gracious, sweet, pleading voice that speaks to
you from the Cross and the Throne, without doing damage--in many
more ways than I have time to enlarge upon now--to your own
character and inward nature. And consider how there lie behind dark
and solemn results about which it does not become me to speak, but
which it still less becomes me--believing as I do--to suppress.
'After death the judgment'; and what will become of the thwarters of
the divine counsel then?
These wounds, many, deep, deadly as they are, are self-inflicted.
There do follow, on God's message and unbelief of it, awful
consequences; but these are not His intention. They are the results
of our misuse of His gracious word. 'Oh, Israel!' wailed the
prophet, 'thou hast destroyed _thyself_' Man's happiness or woe
is his own making, and his own making only. There is no creature in
heaven or earth or hell that is chargeable with your loss but
yourself. We are our own betrayers, our own murderers, our own
accusers, our own avengers, and--I was going to say, and it is
true--our own hell.
Dear friends! this message comes to you once more now, that Jesus
Christ has died for your sins, and that if you will trust Him as
your Saviour, and obey Him as your Sovereign, you will he saved with
an everlasting salvation. Even through my lips God speaks to you.
What are you going to do with His message? Are you going to receive
it, and 'justify' Him, or are you going to reject it, and thwart
Him? You thwart Him if you treat my words now as a mere sermon to be
criticised and forgotten; you thwart Him if you do anything with His
message except take it to your heart and rest wholly upon it. Unless
you do you are suicides; and neither God, nor man, nor devil is
responsible for your destruction. He can say to you, as His servant
said: 'Your blood be upon your own heads; I am clean.' Jesus Christ
is calling to every one of us, 'Turn ye! turn ye! Why will ye die?
As I live, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked.'