This sermon was preached by Pastor
Albert N. Martin on Sunday morning, December
31st, 1989, at the Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey.
This is the first in a series entitled, Meditations on the
Passing of Time, and the title of this message is, The Passing
of Time and Our Souls' Salvation. Each and every one of us gathered
in this building this morning is in a very real sense a creature
of time. The proofs of this fact surround
every one of us. We all have a very special day,
some of us wish we could forget it, and we celebrate it every
year and it's called our birthday. That recurring reminder that
our place in this world had a specific beginning in time. We all live out our lives in
segments of time, no matter how old we are, 2, 4, 6, 10, 20, or 87. We all live out our lives
in these segments of time called minutes, hours, days, weeks,
months, and years. And unless the Lord returns before
we live out our lives, the ultimate proof that we are creatures of
time will be a marker of bronze or a headstone of marble. It
will have your name on it. And next to it, a birthday and
a death day. Now folks, that's reality. That's
not something I conjured up in my study. That's not something
I imagined in the midst of a fitful dream, the result of too much
Christmas feasting. That's reality. You and I together
are creatures of time. However, while we are all creatures
of time, we're made acutely aware of that reality at the close
of each calendar year and at the ushering in of a new year. And that awareness is heightened
and intensified when the passing of the old year is also the passing
of a decade, as is the case with the passing of 1989. And to state this reality in
the most concrete way I know how, let me remind you that this
Lord's Day is not only the last of 52 Lord's Days in 1989, but
it is the last of 520 Lord's Days of the 1980s. Now the fact of our being creatures
of time in this way should be a constant cause for sober reflection. Many portions of the Word of
God underscore the duty of the creatures of time soberly reflecting
upon the reality that they are indeed creatures of time. But perhaps no one passage underscores
this with more vividness and concentration than does the 90th
psalm, the psalm that I read in your hearing. It is in this
psalm that Moses reflects back over many, many years a man who
had lived beyond the three score and ten. And he could say, all
our days are passed away in thy wrath. We bring our years to
an end as a sigh. And he likens the whole of his
life. The beginning is the inhaling.
He began to exhale with a sigh. Oh, he said, that's our life. That's our life. We bring it
to an end as a sigh. And when he gets more specific
in verse 10 and says the ordinary lifespan is 70 years and in the
case of some, 80 years, yet even if it's 80 years, he says, it
is soon gone and we fly away. He likens our lives to a blade
of grass or to a flower that sprouts in the morning, opens
to its full extent with the noonday sun, and by the end of the day
has withered and has died. And with the occasion of the
closing of this year, and with the occasion of the passing of
the decade of the 1980s, I want to help you as I have
sought to help myself to do some sober meditation on this reality
of the passing of time. Now it's obvious to all of us
that there are some things which, with the passing of time, occur
automatically. As one of ten children, I have
seen many of these things occur before my own eyes, with my own
life, and with the lives of my siblings. Having been a pastor
in one place for twenty-seven years, I've observed many of
these things in the life of this congregation. They happen automatically
with the passing of time. The passing of time finds babies
soon becoming toddlers. and toddlers very soon becoming
boys and girls, and very soon boys and girls becoming preteens,
and preteens all too soon becoming teenagers. And while for parents
it seems that those years get frozen in a little bit of eternity
as far as some of their own headaches in coping with their teens, it
isn't long before teenagers become young adults. And it isn't long
before young adults become mature men and women. And mature men
and women become middle-aged people who join AARP. And you have the shock coming
that I had. It came for the first time last year when I enrolled
in a motel and I was asked, do you have your AARP card? Automatically. I didn't ask that
my age be tattooed on my forehead. I didn't go around with my birth
certificate hung on my neck. But those things that mark out
a man no longer as a teen or a young man, or someone merely
at the height of his physical strength and powers, but as a
middle-ager. The clerk picked up those signs
and signals and asked for my ARP card. And middle-aged people
soon become old people. And then old people become nothing
but names on the obituary page, and names etched on a tombstone. Now, dear people, that's reality. And I would appreciate it if
I had your eyes upon me while I speak on this reality, because
I'm not here doing my thing as a preacher, and I find it distressing
when I'm seeking to impress weighty issues, when I don't have people's
eyes on me. Would you do me the kindness,
please? I'm not looking in any specific direction. Those of
you who, for one reason or another, have not been looking at me almost
since I began, I would appreciate if you'd look at me, because
I want to speak to you about the great issues of the fact
that we are creatures of time. And I've said that Many things
in our passage through time happen automatically. Barring a life
cut short by premature death or radically altered by some
abnormality, all of these stages from the cradle to the grave
come and go automatically merely with the passing of time. However, the things that really
count in that brief journey through time, the things that make that
journey meaningful and useful, the things that prepare us for
the end of that journey, even death and judgment, they do not
come automatically merely with the passing of time. Not only
do they not come automatically, But given the reality of human
sin and a fiendish devil, they will only come in the way of
the most concentrated, serious application of mind and heart
to obtain them, and then the most dogged determination to
retain them. And it is some of those things
to which I want to direct your attention beginning this morning
and then, God willing, completing this meditation next Lord's Day
morning. I have only one of those things
to bring to your attention this morning, and it is this. The
passing of time does not automatically move us closer to repentance
towards God. and faith toward our Lord Jesus
Christ. The passing of time does not
move us automatically towards repentance and faith. Now, in opening up this very
simple but sober reflection, let me first of all underscore
how important is the issue before us. Why should I be concerned
about repentance toward God and faith toward Christ in the first
place? Why bother to spend time even
thinking about the fact that repentance and faith do not automatically
move us closer to repentance and faith? Why even bother? Well,
because the Bible says in Luke 13 3, except he repent, you will
perish. Unless in your little bracket
of time you experience what the Bible means when it speaks of
repentance towards God, time will result in your ripening
to perish at the end of your little bracket of that commodity. 2 Peter 3.9, in a passage which
deals with time, Peter says, the Lord is not slack concerning
his promises. Some men come slackness. but
is long-suffering to us-ward, not wishing that any should perish,
but that all should come to repentance." In the context, Peter is dealing
with those who mock all talk about the second coming of Christ.
They say, I've heard that business. My grandmother used to sing songs
about the second coming of Jesus and get a glassy-eyed, far-away
look in her eye, and she's in her grave. I go every Memorial
Day and I put flowers on her grave. The Lord didn't come.
And I can remember my mom and dad and Christians sitting around
and singing and talking about the second coming. The Lord hasn't
come. Everything continues as it has
for decades, for centuries, for millennia. That's the language
of 2 Peter 3. And Peter says, wait a minute.
The Lord has not forgotten his promise. But he is, as it were,
parceling out brackets of time, because he is longsuffering,
not wishing that his people perish, but that they come to repentance. You see, the only alternative
to perishing is to come to repentance. If you do not come to repentance
in time, even time dictated by the longsuffering of God, you
are going to perish. Oh, you say that's the scare
tactics of preachers. No, that's the word of the God
who cannot lie. That's how important it is. Except you repent, you'll perish. That's why you need soberly to
think on this one issue that I set before you this morning.
The passing of time will not automatically move you closer
to repentance toward God. And what is important with reference
to repentance is important with reference to faith to the Lord
Jesus. For the Bible says that you will
be forever crushed by the wrath of God if you do not come to
faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Hear the Scriptures, John 3.36,
He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life, but he
that believes not shall not see life. But the wrath of God is
abiding upon him. As long as a man, a woman, a
boy, a girl does not believe, the wrath of God is resting upon
him. And if he goes through his or
her little bracket, little parenthesis of time, with the wrath of God
abiding upon him because he does not believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ, And the last moment in the bracket of time is spent,
and time is no more for that man or woman, and that soul is
launched into eternity. The wrath of God will continue
to abide through the grave and on to judgment and out into eternal
darkness, where there shall be weeping and wailing and gnashing
of teeth, and the smoke of their torment shall ascend up forever
and ever. and they shall have no rest day
nor night. My friend, listen, when I say
that I have one issue to bring before you this morning in our
sober reflections on the passing of time, And that that issue
is this, that the passing of time does not automatically move
us closer to repentance towards God and faith toward the Lord
Jesus Christ. How important is the issue? It
is the most single important issue you can contemplate in
your little bracket of time. Now then, some of you sitting
here have heard this truth before. In fact, some of you have heard
both the truth and the claims of the gospel set before you
all throughout 1989. Some of you in your homes Many of you in this place, Lord's
Day by Lord's Day, and in other contexts, you have heard the
truth of your need of Christ, of God's provision for sinners
in the person and work of Christ. You have heard the gracious summons
to repent and to believe the gospel. You have heard the marvelous
promise that all who come to God through Christ will be received
and pardoned and adopted into God's family and given the gift
of the Holy Spirit and made heirs of eternal life. And as you have
heard that message, perhaps some of you can remember back the
first Lord's Day of 1989. You heard it. And what was your
response? Well, you didn't say to yourself,
well, I'll go through another year, impenitent and unbelieving. No, you didn't say that. Some
of you who heard that message on the first Lord's Day of 1980,
And there was urgent and passionate appeal made to your conscience
and to your will to repent and to believe the gospel. You did
not sit there and say to yourself, well, I will squander all 520
Lord's Days of the decade of the 80s and come to the last
Lord's Day still impenitent and unbelieving. You didn't say that.
You didn't intend that. But when the overtures of God's
gracious offer of life and salvation came to you in the preaching,
what did you do? You said, well, I feel the pressure. My conscience affirms the reality
of my sinnerhood. I can no more deny that I'm marked
for an eternal existence somewhere than I can deny the consciousness
of my own identity. There are other things that have
to be attended to. Next week, sometime during January,
surely I'll not trifle with my soul beyond January, but I will
attend to the issue of getting serious about repenting and about
believing. And when 1980 passed and you
look back and said another year, and I've heard the overtures
of mercy and the command to repent and to believe, and I've squandered
that here, but I have no intention of doing that with 1981. And when the offers of mercy
went forth on the first Lord's Day of 1981, you said, well,
I just have a few things to attend to. Surely by the second or the
third, and the same was true of eighty-two and eighty-three.
And think of it! Think of it! Some of you sit
here this morning, a whole decade squandered! Squandered. But you didn't squander it intentionally
a decade at a time, a year at a time. You squandered it a day
at a time. A week from now, how important
is the issue? It's the most important issue
you can address in your own little bracket of time. What have you
done with that issue? You have simply tabled it for
what you have regarded to be more important business. You've
not denied that the issue is worthy of consideration. You've
not written it off as a lot of preacher's falderal and a lot
of religious nonsense. You're not in that category.
You're here this morning because you do believe that those issues
have validity. You do believe that Christ has
gracious claims over you and makes sovereignly merciful offers
to you in the gospel. But what have you done with these
most important issues? You have Now my third question is, what
has happened during this tabling time? This tabling of the issue that
finds you still in your state of unbelief and impenitence,
still on the path to perishing? Still under the wrath of God.
But what has actually happened to you during that time? Are
you automatically closer to repenting and to believing? You say, I
think I am. I have been in church 52 more
times, you told us. 520 times in the decade. Surely
then I am closer to repenting and believing. My friend, listen,
that isn't what the Bible says. You know what the Bible says?
And here I'm not going to quote the verses from memory, though
I could, but I want you to see them with your own eyeballs in
your own Bible. You know what the Bible says
about you? What has this time actually done to you? Number
one, you have been by degrees hardening your heart. Turn to
Hebrews chapter three, if you will, please. Hebrews chapter
three. You have by degrees been hardening
your heart. Listen to the Word of God in
verses 7 and 8 of Hebrews 3. Wherefore, even as the Holy Spirit
says, and then there is a quotation from the 95th Psalm, Today if
you shall hear His voice, harden not your heart. Today if you
shall hear His voice, Harden not your heart. What is the teaching
of this passage? Simply this, that to hear the
voice of God speaking in the Word of God, and to do anything
other than strict, immediate compliance with that Word, is
to harden the heart. If you hear His voice, do not
harden your heart. What is the antithesis, the opposite
of hardening the heart? It is rendering immediate, full,
unqualified obedience to the voice of God, so that when the
voice of God called you through the gospel, On the first Lord's
Day of 1989, God said, today, if you hear my voice, harden
not your heart. You did not repent. You did not
believe. What did you do? You hardened
your heart. Every subsequent time at family
worship, In school chapel, in this place, in your Sunday school
class, in the quiet hours lying upon your bed when the scriptures
came back to your memory, and thoughts of heaven and hell,
and in recent days as we've seen the Lord Jesus placarded before
us as He is dragged from Gethsemane to the High Priest, and from
the High Priest to Pilate, and from Pilate to Herod, and back
to Pilate, and into the Praetorium, as we've beheld Him bruised and
beaten, contusions upon His face, a crown of thorns upon His brow,
blood mingled with the spittle of unprincipled men. Marching
out voluntarily to die upon a cross under the wrath of God, you've
heard His voice. But what have you done? You've
not obeyed that voice. You're still wedded to your sins.
You've not repented. You've not thrown yourself upon
the Lord Jesus Christ unreservedly as your only hope of life and
salvation, embracing Him to be your God and your Savior. What
has the time in which you've done that really done to you? It has not automatically brought
you nearer to repentance and faith. It has hardened your heart. It has hardened your heart. That's what the scripture teaches.
Secondly, it has actually increased your stock in divine wrath. Oh, you say, come off it, Pastor
Martin. Is that what you're thinking? Then say that to God as I ask
you to turn to Romans chapter two. Say that to God. Because God uses commercial language
to say that's exactly what you've done. You have increased your
stock in divine wrath. Your shares of divine wrath have
increased and their interest has gone up exponentially. Gone up. Not this way, but this way. Exponentially,
I'm sorry. Romans chapter 2. Don't fault
me for the pronunciation of a word. Romans 2 verse 4. Do you despise the riches of
His goodness? Now look at the words of time
and forbearance and longsuffering. What is forbearance? It is God
bearing with an impenitent sinner over a period of time. What is
longsuffering? It is suffering long on the part
of God over a sinner that despises His grace and His mercy and His
kindness and His salvation, clutters up His world with His life of
self-centeredness and sin and impenitence and unbelief. You
see, forbearance and longsuffering are words that have no meaning
apart from time, time, time. And here he is writing and reasoning
with people and he says, Do you despise? Do you treat lightly? Do you regard as a thing of no
worth His goodness and forbearance and longsuffering, not knowing
that the goodness of God leads thee to repentance? Why has God
been bearing with you? while the overtures of His mercy
have come to you and you've refused them? Not today, not today, not
today, not today! God has been suffering long,
bearing long. Do you treat it lightly, not
knowing that God is giving you this opportunity within your
little bracket of time to come to repentance? But now, since
you've not repented, look what you have done. Verse 5, But after
thy hardness, there it is again, the time of God's long suffering
and forbearing has resulted in your hardness of heart. But after
thy hardness and impenitent heart, now look at the language, treasurest
up for thyself wrath. You are treasuring up wrath. God says every day you live under
the canopy of His infinite forbearance, and you do not take that forbearance
as the occasion to close with Christ. To divorce your sins
and the world and self-centeredness and throw yourself upon His mercy
in Christ at the end of every such day, you have a deposit
slip entered into the bank of heaven, five more shares of divine
wrath. And the next day, five more shares
of divine wrath. And the next day, five more shares,
until you have what Paul describes as a veritable treasure chest
of wrath in heaven. And when your last day in the
bracket of time comes, and only God knows when it is, He'll dump
the treasure chest in your lap. Dear people, do you have no fear
of Almighty God emptying a treasure chest of holy wrath upon a little
worm of the dust like you? You remember what Moses said?
Who knows the power of thy wrath and thy fear that is due unto
thee in the light of it? You go whole humming along. You've been hardening your heart.
You've been treasuring up wrath. You've been doing a third thing.
You've been resisting the Holy Spirit. Turn to Acts chapter
7. You've been resisting the Holy
Spirit. Acts chapter 7. Peter is preaching
to a people who were wonderfully favored. Among all the nations
of the earth, they and they only had the Scriptures. Among all
the peoples of the earth, they and they only had entered into
special covenantal relationship with God by His sovereign choice
and mercy. And yet, speaking to these very
people who had put the Lord Jesus to death, notice what Stephen
says in verse 51, of Acts 7, you stiff-necked and uncircumcised
in heart and ears, you do always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do ye. Now what does it mean in this
context to resist the Holy Spirit? We'll just read on the next verse.
It's self-explanatory. Which of the prophets did not
your fathers persecute? And they killed them that showed
before of the coming of the righteous one of whom you have now become
betrayers and murderers. Ye who received the law as it
was ordained by angels and kept it not. In the context, what
is resisting the Holy Spirit? It is refusing to obey the Word
of God when He delivers it to us. That's it. How did He deliver
His Word to the fathers of these people? Through the prophets! When the prophet came, His opening
words were always these, Thus saith Jehovah! And when they would not receive
the word of God, they were resisting the Holy Spirit who was the author
of that word. Now, they played clever head
games on themselves. You see, they tried to make it
an issue between themselves and the prophet who was the mouthpiece
of the Spirit. And so Amos said, they hate him
that reproves in the gate. Well, they really didn't hate
him. They hated the God who reproved through him. And you see, men
do the same today. There will be some of you sitting
here right now saying, that's Pastor Martin's thing. I get
so sick and tired. All this heavy stuff. This is
New Year's. Let's be happy. Let's be jolly. And he's up there
with a serious face and tears brimming in his eyes and talking
about, is that a killjoy? No, friend. This book says if
you die in penitent and unbelieving, you die forever lost. And I believe it. And the Holy Spirit attests in
your own conscience that what I'm saying from this book is
true. But what are you doing? You're
resisting the Spirit every time through the preaching of the
Word. That's the way God now speaks to us, not by angels,
not by living prophets, but by men who faithfully, in all of
their weakness, open up this Word and say, Thus saith Jehovah
in his book. And what the book says, God says!
And what God says to men now, He says in and through the book.
And you try to make it an issue of, well, that's His view, that's
His interpretation. My friend, words such as these
are not open to interpretation. He that believeth not shall be
damned. He, very simple, that believes not, shall be damned! Except ye repent, you'll perish!
He that believes not the wrath of God abides on him. What have
you been doing? You've been resisting the Holy
Spirit. Every time the Spirit through the Word has said, Come,
come to Christ. Come as you are. Come now. Come today. Come this moment. And you've resisted that Word
of gracious command and invitation. Every time the Word has commanded
you to repent, to turn from your sin and self-centeredness and
your preoccupation with your career and your body and your
faith and your friends and your fun and called you into the way
of serious discipleship and you've rejected and refused it, you've
been resisting the Holy Spirit. You say, well, what's the big
deal if I do that? My friends, there's only one
person. who can show you your true state as a sinner and savingly
reveal Jesus Christ to you. And you know who that is? His
name's not in the phone book. It's the person of the Holy Spirit.
When He has come, He will reprove the world of sin. He shall take
the things of mine and reveal them unto you. No man can come
to Me except the Father which has sent Me draw him. It is by
the Spirit that we come to know our true state. It is by the
Spirit that we come to know the Savior. It is by the Spirit we
are enabled to repent and to believe. And what are you doing?
I don't mean to be gross, but if it can stick the thing in
your conscience in memory, The only hand that can hold out Christ
to you, you're chopping off its fingers bit by bit. Until the
time will come when there'll be no hand stretched forth anymore. And God will say, you want to
be a sinner? You want to go on in your independent existence?
You want to go on living your own life by your own standards,
according to your own rules? Then all right. You can have
it. And you will be as good As if
you're in hell already. There are people, cumbering the
earth, who are as good as in hell already. Because God says,
my spirit shall not always strive with man. He said, but Pastor
Martin, are you saying that little puny men can resist God? In terms
of God's eternal purposes and decrees, no. Of course not. Who hath resisted His will? Who can say unto Him, What doest
thou? That's the language of Scripture.
But this is also the language of Scripture. You do always resist
the Holy Spirit. And I'm not embarrassed to preach
what's in this book. And some of you are resisting
the Holy Spirit. The Spirit who has brought near
to you the powers of the world to come. In spite of all the
con games you try to play on yourself in your own little head,
in your heart of heart, you know that this book is for real, you
know that hell's for real, you know that heaven's for real,
you know Christ is for real, and you know with all our faults
and failures and sins and inadequacies, you know that those of us who
preach to you are real. You know it! Though you try to
play head games to discredit God, His Word, and His servants. You say, who lets you around
inside of my head that you're talking about me? My friend,
you're not so special. You're just a common, ordinary,
impenitent, self-justifying sinner. You're not so special. You're
like the whole bunch of us. Does that make you uncomfortable?
Not if you're a Christian. It makes you grateful that God
took you out of that class. And you acknowledge that only
God could do it. This is what you've been doing, friend. Hardening
your heart. treasuring up wrath, resisting
the Holy Spirit. And you've been doing a fourth
and final thing that's terribly serious. You've been tempting
God. You've been putting God to the
test. That's what it means to tempt or try God. Remember when
Jesus was tempted by the devil in the wilderness, one of the
temptations was this. And the devil's never, never
more dangerous than when he comes quoting the Bible. He doesn't
come. with horns and pitchforks, say,
Boo! No, no, the Bible says he comes
as a messenger of light, an angel of light and a messenger of righteousness.
He comes as a quoter of scripture. And he comes to our Lord and
says, If you are the son of God, see this great pinnacle place
of the temple, greatest point of danger, yet prominence, climb
up, cast yourself down, for the scripture says, He shall give
His angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways,
lest thou dash thy foot against the stone. And surely if the
promise is going to be good for any of the people of God, it
will be good for you, the Son of God. Cast yourself down. Demonstrate that you are the
well-beloved of the Father, if He is going to fulfill the promise
in anyone's case, surely in yours. And how did our Lord respond?
He said, it is written, thou shalt not make trial of the Lord
by God. What is it to make trial of God?
It's to put God's patience and faithfulness and mercy to the
test in a way for which there is no biblical warrant. And that's
exactly what some of you have done all during the 1980s, some
of you all throughout 1989. You say, well, the insurance
charts say that people my age die only one in every so many
thousands, one in so many millions if you're very young. Insurance charts say that people
of my age, only so many die. I'll run my risks. What are you
doing? You're tempting God. You've thrown yourself off the
pinnacle, as it were, saying, God will hold me up from crashing
into hell for another day, another week. another month, another
year, and will you dare to say on the threshold of a new decade,
I'll be alive at the end of the nineties? My friend, you're tempting
God. But the scripture says, boast
not thyself of tomorrow, for you know not what a day may bring
forth. You know not what a day may bring
forth. Now, that's what's happened with
the passing of time. That's not a pretty picture,
is it? But that's the interpretation the Bible gives. You see, the
passing of this year, of this decade, has not automatically
brought you closer to repentance and faith. Oh, yes! If you entered
the decade as a toddler, it's brought you into pre-teens or
into your teenage years automatically. You didn't have to do a thing
but breathe and eat and sleep. It did it. If you're in your
teens at the beginning of the eighties, it's brought you into
young manhood and womanhood automatically. You didn't have to do a thing.
If you entered it at the prime of your life, It's brought the
gray hairs. You didn't have to do a thing
to bring them. Or some of you make efforts to cover them, but
you don't do anything to bring them. The crow's feet. You ladies,
you first see it when the skin under your chin loses some of
its resilience, and on your neck. And all the oil of Olay won't
stop it. No, He's going to come automatically,
inevitably. Would God that repentance and
faith came like crow's feet and sagging skin under the chin.
But it doesn't, my friend. Repentance and faith are not
closer to you. They are further away than they've
ever been. Because all during this time
you've been hardening your heart, treasuring up wrath, resisting
the Holy Spirit, and tempting God. You say, Preacher, you've
proven your case from the Bible. What do I do? My friend, you're
alive. You still have your rational
faculties. God's long-suffering has stretched out over your hardened
heart. over your treasured wrath, over
your resisting of the Spirit, and over your tempting Him? What
has He done? He has stretched, as it were,
the curtains of His tent of mercy. And they reach even to you today. And what must you do today? What can you do? What ought you
to do here and now? Well, the answer of the Word
of God is clear. And the answer of the Word of
God is this, that you must resolve here and now in this place, this
hour, to face the fact that time will not automatically bring
you closer to repentance and to faith. Face it here, now,
in this moment, not tomorrow. Don't think about your bowl games
and your New Year's dinner. Think right now. God's wrath
is above you. An open, yawning mouth of hell
is before you. A hard heart and treasured wrath
and resisting the Spirit and tempting God are pushing you
at breakneck speed into that yawning mouth of hell. And you
must this day resolve and say, I must, I will take heed to the
gracious overture of God in the gospel. This is what God says,
today, today is the day of salvation. If you hear my voice, harden
not your heart. God says to the prophet Isaiah,
seek the Lord while he may be found. And why? When may he be
found? Right now, now is the day of
salvation. Seek him while he may be found. Call upon Him while He is near. He'll never be nearer than when
you're shut up in this place on His day with a mass of people
who love and believe the truth of God and with a servant of
God seeking to reason with you and plead with you and entreat
you. Seek the Lord while He's near. Call upon Him while He
may be found. Let the wicked forsake His way
and the unrighteous man his thought. And let him return unto the Lord,
for we will have mercy upon him, and he will abundantly pardon.
You must this day take heed to those words. You must this day
lay hold of his gracious commands and promises. He commands all
men everywhere to repent at 1730. He promises, Him that comes to
me I will in no wise cast out. He that believes on the Son shall
have life. Him that comes to me I will in
no wise cast out. Oh, my vacillating undecided
friend. I close by quoting some of the
most sober words I've ever heard. In Christian music, they were
obviously the words of a poet. Then they were put to music.
And for those of you tempted to make this last Lord's Day
of 1989, the last Lord's Day of 520 in the decade of the 80s,
another day when you say, yes, I feel the compelling pressure,
my conscience affirms the reality, I can't deny it, but not this
immediacy. That's the part I cannot, I will
not. Oh, my friend, hear me. Hear
me as I quote the words of another who thought sober thoughts on
this issue. Under the imagery of what we
might call a holy reverie, the poet spoke of a dream that he
had, and these are his words. I dreamed that the great judgment
morning had come and the trumpet had blown. I dreamed that the
nations had gathered to judgment before the white throne. From
that throne came a bright shining angel who stood on the land and
the sea and swore with his hand raised to heaven that time was
no longer to be. The moral man came to the judgment,
but his self-righteous rags would not do, for the men who had crucified
Jesus had passed off as moral men too. Now listen carefully. The man that had put off salvation,
not today, I'll get saved by and by. No time now to think
of repentance. But alas, he had found time. And oh, what a weeping and wailing. When the lost were told of their
fate, they cried for the rocks and for the mountains. They prayed,
but their prayer was too late. No time now to think of religion. No time now to think of repentance! No time now to think of faith! Yes, some time out there, but
not now! Alas, He found time to die! God have mercy! If your time
to die is in God's book, and His time to invite and entreat,
you push aside. For then you'll join those described
in the refrain of that song. Oh, what a weeping and wailing. When you, lost soul, will be
told of your fate. You'll cry for rocks and for
mountains. You'll pray. But your prayer
will be too late. And I'll meet you in judgment.
Point your finger at me then and try to tell me in the presence
of God what you're trying to tell yourself about me right
now. Try to tell me in God's presence. The preacher's just
doing his thing. A little bit of acting ability.
He's just histrionics. He's just doing his thing. Play
this game! Tell God that when you stand
before him and see if you can make it stick. God himself will
vindicate what you know in your heart of hearts is true. that
I seek not yours, but you. I have nothing to gain but, humanly
speaking, bringing near the day of my own death by pouring my
soul into earnest, close reasoning, preaching, pleading, entreating,
arguing, laying out the Word of God. What do you think, in
the name of all common sense, do I have to gain but your soul,
but your soul, You're a never-dying soul that is a stranger to repentance,
a stranger to faith. Oh, this day, determine, determine
that you will not pillow your head unless you are pillowed
upon Christ, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the
world. You say, oh, but the implications
are such that, I don't know, the cost is so great, it'll mean
severing this relationship, giving up this particular pursuit. Yes, it may mean all of that
and a hundred times more, but what shall it profit a man if
he gained the whole world and lose his own soul? That's why
Jesus said, Strive to enter the narrow gate. No matter what it
costs, get through the gate of true repentance and faith. I'll
have to eat crow. I may be in debt to the government
for years, all the cheating on my back, taxes. I may have to
make this right. I'll be shamed. I'll be embarrassed."
To what? The Son of God hung in nakedness
upon a cross in total innocence and yet in accumulative guilt
when He was charged with the sins of His people. He bore the
worst shame. He was stripped of all that we
might inherit all by His grace, whatever the cost. Repent and
believe the gospel, because this first sobering thought I leave
with you this morning, the passing of time does not automatically
bring you closer to repentance and faith. You'll get there only
when the now of the gospel becomes the all-absorbing spiritual passion
of your heart. Let us pray. Our Father, we are sobered by
Your Word, and we take comfort in the words of the prophet who
said, to this man will I look, even to him who is of a poor
and a contrite spirit and who trembles at my word. We believe, O Lord, it is right
that we should inwardly tremble when handling such awesome, such
fearful realities. And yet we thank you for the
glory of the gospel, that we in the Lord Jesus can have our
treasure chest of wrath emptied. because He bore the wrath for
sinners, and that all of our grieving of the Spirit, all of
our resisting, all of our hardness of heart can be overcome by His
grace. O gracious God, do it this morning,
for many we pray, boys, girls, preteens, teenagers, young adults,
people in the prime of their years, middle-aged and old men
and women, O God in mercy we pray, may this day be marked
as the day of life and salvation for many. We who have been brought
to you in your grace, what can we say but thank you for the
grace that softened our hearts, that overcame our resistance,
opened to us the folly of our resisting the Spirit. And we
thank you for that grace that is yet extended, that long suffering
that still stretches out to the neediest sinner in this place
today. Oh, may it not be stretched out
in vain. Hear our prayer. May your word
abide with us, burn within our hearts, and may we obey its overtures
of mercy and its commands to seek your face, we ask in Jesus'
name. Amen.