PLEASING GOD.
A Sermon
Preached On Thursday Evening, November
22, 1849.
BY THE REV. C. G. FINNEY,
(Of America)
At The Borough Road Chapel, Southwark.
The Penny Pulpit, No. 1473.
“By faith Enoch
was translated so that he did not see death, ‘and
was not found because God had translated him’;
for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God.” (Hebrews 11:5)
In speaking from these words I shall discuss the
following points:
I. WHO GAVE THIS
TESTIMONY TO ENOCH?
II. THE NATURE OF
THIS TESTIMONY!
III. HOW THIS
TESTIMONY WAS GIVEN!
IV. THE CONDITIONS
ON WHICH HE MUST HAVE RECEIVED IT, AND HOW WE MAY OBTAIN SUCH TESTIMONY?
V. THE IMPORTANCE
OF HAVING THIS TESTIMONY!
VI. SOME OF THE
REASONS WHY SO FEW SEEM TO HAVE THE TESTIMONY THAT THEY PLEASE GOD?
This is the
outline of thought I’d like to call your attention to, and I suppose that these
points will include things which every thoughtful mind will naturally want to
know.
I. Our first question is
WHOSE TESTIMONY WAS IT THAT ENOCH HAD THAT HE PLEASED GOD? Surely it must have been God’s testimony,
because who could give this testimony but God?
If God was pleased with Enoch, and he knew it, how else could he have
known this other than by a revelation from God? And this was what the apostle meant, that Enoch had God’s testimony
that he pleased Him.
II. What was THE
NATURE OF THIS TESTIMONY? (1.) It was
not a negative testimony, an absence of sin and guilt. It was not that God was simply not
displeased with him. It was not a mere
absence of anything. A hardened sinner
will sometimes have this negative kind of testimony: he may not feel the frown
of God, nor have any sense at all of God's displeasure. (2.)The testimony then, that Enoch had, was
a positive testimony. God in some way
convinced Enoch, and let him understand that He was pleased with him. He indicated the fact that He was pleased
with Enoch. Enoch had God’s testimony
that He pleased him.
III. HOW CAN WE
BELIEVE THAT THIS TESTIMONY WAS GIVEN TO ENOCH.
(1.) This testimony was
not given simply in some providential manner.
God did not reveal to Enoch through His providence that He was pleased
with him; this has never been the course of God with man. Everyone knows that often it is quite
impossible to know the moral character of a man by the way in which God deals
with him in this world. And this fact
proves that this world is not a state of retribution, of rewards and
punishments. I fear that there are many
mistakes made on this subject. The
friends of Job reasoned wrong on this subject; they believed and argued that
God's dealings with Job proved that he was a wicked man; but Job resisted this
mode of reasoning, and insisted that they had a false view of the subject. Almost the entire scope of the book of Job
goes to establish the point that God does not, by his providence in this world,
indicate His view of the moral character of man. The Bible in many places affirms this. “For He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends
rain on the just and on the unjust.”
(Matt 5:45) The wicked are often
exalted while the righteous are trodden down and afflicted. God rarely manifests His views of their
character during their lives, or in their death. The Psalmist observed this,
and he says, “I have seen the wicked in great power, And spreading himself like
a native green tree”. (Ps 37:35) “They are not in trouble as other men, Nor
are they plagued like other men. Behold, these are the ungodly, who are always
at ease. They increase in riches. Surely I have cleansed my heart in vain, and
washed my hands in innocence.” (Ps
73:5,12-13) But he said all this before
God showed him the reason why. When he tried to understand, it was too painful
for him, it plagued him all day long.
Then he went into the house of God, and it was while he was there that
he understood. There he saw how God
deals with men according to their characters, that God sets the wicked in
slippery places, and finally casts them down into destruction. (v.14-18)
This Psalm illustrates what I have just said, that we should not believe
that God providentially gave this testimony to Enoch. And it is according to the universal observation and testimony of
mankind, that God does not reveal His special pleasure to men this way.
(2.)God must have, in some
way, indicated this fact to the mind of Enoch through His word by His
Spirit. How else could God have made
the communication? God’s revelation to
Enoch that He was pleased with him must have been either by providence or been
impressed on his mind by the Spirit, as I believe, through His word. Please remember that at that time the
scriptures were not written like they are now, and therefore, the Spirit of God
could not have, without a direct revelation from heaven, given him something
that is written in the Bible. Yet God
manifested Himself to Enoch through His word by His Spirit. And here let me say, that in all cases where
men have this testimony, it must be of this nature. It must be that God gives this testimony through His word by His
Spirit.
(3.) God does this by
speaking peace to the soul and allowing the soul to understand that God is at
peace with it. God sheds His peace,
diffuses it over the individual’s soul, and gives him the Spirit of adoption. God’s smile on his soul causes him to understand
and draws him into union with Himself.
God’s love is shed abroad in his heart, thus creating such a state of
mind that the individual can clearly understand that God accepts him and that
God is pleased with him. If I had time
to dwell on this part of the subject, I believe it would be very easy to show
that this is the experience of every Christian who ever had a true religious
experience. This is the experience
those who have true communion with God.
It is the experience of those who know what it means to be drawn into
union with God in such a manner that they sympathize so deeply with Him that
they partake of His holiness and drink of the river of His pleasures. As a result, they understand what the mind
of God is, as to partake, in part, of His nature, and understand the nature of
the peace that God enjoys. Let me say
that God can give our mind a sense of justification, in other words, a sense of
His approval, so that our mind can have no doubt of it at the time. We perfectly understand our acceptance with
God. God can so smile on our soul, and
so shed Himself into our soul, that it seems to breathe an atmosphere of peace,
so deep and so calm that we don’t doubt our acceptance with God, we don’t doubt
that we are in that state where God is pleased.
IV. THE CONDITIONS
THAT ENOCH RECEIVED THIS TESTIMONY, AND BY WHICH EVERYONE ELSE MAY RECEIVE IT.
(1.) The individual who
has this testimony must actually please God, for God will bear no false testimony. It is not enough that Christ has pleased
God; that in some mysterious manner Christ’s righteousness is imputed to the
individual. It is true that God is
pleased with Christ. But in the text it
says that God was pleased with Enoch. I
believe that we must understand something more than that God has accepted him
for Christ’s sake. I believe that we
are to understand that God, for Christ’s sake, gave him so much of the Holy
Spirit as to secure in him a state of mind that was actually pleasing to God,
and that through the Spirit he actually did what pleased God. We say then that anyone who would enjoy this
testimony that he pleases God, must have a state of mind that is acceptable to
God, and live a life that is pleasing to God.
(2.) There must be, as a
condition, complete confidence in God.
There is no duty that is as pleasing to God. When Enoch lived, the atonement had not yet been made, but by
then, it was understood that an atonement would be made. And if this was true, he would have had
complete confidence in God as a condition for pleasing Him. The Bible says that without faith it is impossible
to please God; Enoch must therefore have had complete faith in God. But what is complete confidence? I mean by complete confidence that Enoch
must have hated all self-confidence, and he must have cast himself on God’s
grace. And in order to do this, he must
have had some knowledge of the manner in which God expected man to have
complete confidence in His truthfulness, faithfulness, and mercy.
(3.) Enoch must have
lived for God. The Old Testament says
that he walked with God three hundred years, and then was translated, “and was
not, for God took him”. This walking
with God implies agreement for the Bible says, “How can two walk together unless
they agree”? In other words, two can’t
walk together unless they agree.
Therefore, when it says that, “Enoch walked with God”, we understand
that his will and his heart were one with God; and if this was true he could
have had the testimony that he pleased God.
Remember that everyone who would please God, and would have God’s
testimony, must do as Enoch did; he must agree to have God’s government and no
other, he must live for every end for which God lives.
(4.) Enoch must have had
his heart set on pleasing God. Nobody
will have the testimony that he pleases God unless he truly intends to please
God. Anyone who has the testimony that
he pleases God has a heart set on pleasing Him; he considers pleasing God
extremely important. He gives himself
to the work of pleasing God as a condition of pleasing Him.
(5.) Such a person cannot
live without the testimony that he pleases God. He not only aims to please God, but he also cannot live without
the testimony that he pleases Him. If
he truly aims to please God, and his heart is set on this, he will not be
satisfied until he succeeds in pleasing God.
If an individual wants this testimony, but it’s not very important to
him, he won’t get it.
(6.) Such a person must
also believe that it possible for him to please God. If we do not believe that it possible to please God; if we think
that God’s requirements are so very strict, and God requires so much of us that
it is almost hopeless for us to expect to please Him, if we have this idea, I
say we can’t expect to please God. I
have heard many people talk as if it was the height of presumption to try to
please God in this world, as if it would be very dangerous to the soul to
indulge in the belief that we could please Him. These people see God as so strict that the highest angel in
heaven has little hope of pleasing Him.
How can we hope to do it?
Now when we have this
idea that God requires us to make bricks without straw, that He requires us to
do what we can’t do because He doesn’t give us the ability to do it, then we
can no longer expect to please God.
When we get this idea, we believe that we can’t please God. Yes, God is holy. Yes, His requirements are perfect. Yes, God requires us to love Him with all our heart, soul, and
strength, and our neighbors as ourselves, but it is also true that His grace is
equal to His requirements; and in His requirements, God pledges His grace to
enable us to perform what He wants us to do.
It would be infinitely strange; in fact it would be unjust if it were
otherwise.
(7.) Another condition of
having this testimony is the belief that we not only can please God, but we can
also secure His testimony to the fact that we please Him. If we forget that God is slow to manifest
His pleasure, it will no doubt effectively prevent us from having this
testimony. The tendency of sin prevents
our soul from enjoying the delightful assurance God’s acceptance, and the archenemy
of our souls is always ready to prevent us from rising to this belief and
conviction.
Now, let me pause
here, and apply what I have said to everybody: not just to professing
Christians. Do you really desire the
testimony that you please God? You
certainly can’t expect to have it while you remain unrepentant. But, can you have this testimony if you set
your heart on pleasing God? Yes! You can.
You don’t have this testimony now, and some of you may say that it will
be a long time before you can have it.
Why? Will it take you months or
years to repent and set your heart on obeying God? Oh, no! Well, it is just
as important for you to have this testimony as anybody else, so why not say
right now “since I can have this testimony by the grace of God, I will not live
another day without it”. Please
remember that a spirit of self-sacrifice is a condition of having this testimony. Christ did not live to please Himself, but
to please His Father: and, in order to do this, He was willing to sacrifice
everything, even His own life. Now, if
any of His followers want to have the testimony that they please God, they must
have the self-sacrificing spirit of their master. They must be willing to be used up for the good of His kingdom.
They must be willing, as Christ was, to sacrifice even their lives.
Let us now consider--
V. THE IMPORTANCE
OF HAVING THIS TESTIMONY.
(1.) If professing
Christians do not have this testimony, the best that can be said of them is
that they live in a state of continuous doubt.
They don’t have any testimony that they don’t please God, yet they admit
that they feel such a sense of condemnation that they feel that they are as far
as possible from having the testimony that they please Him. Now, perhaps, this is true with some of
you. You feel like everything condemns
you. Every sermon you hear condemns
you. Your own consciences condemn
you. You can’t go into your closet and
pray like you should. God seems to
frown on you. You have lots of evidence
that you don’t please God. Some of you
may not be in this state of depression, but your life, to say the best of it,
is full of doubts; you don’t have enough evidence that God is pleased with you
to satisfy you. You have many doubts,
fears, and anxieties. Perhaps, you
seldom, if ever, rise higher than to be greatly anxious about yourselves: or,
perhaps, you are too careless even to care about it at all. When you have heard a soul-searching sermon,
instead of walking away with the clear testimony that you please God, you leave
with many doubts and perplexities about it.
No wonder you doubt whether you love and please God. If you don’t have the testimony that you do,
you have good reason to doubt: and I beg you, unless you have this testimony,
don’t persuade yourselves that you should not doubt! The only rational way for you to act is to accept the fact that
you do not please God. If you did
please Him, why would you be in this state of anxiety? Why do you continually doubt that God is
pleased with you? Is it because God is
unwilling to reveal Himself to you, even though you please Him? Let your own hearts answer that question.
(2.) If you are a professing
Christian, and you don’t have this testimony, then when you are called on to
proclaim the gospel to sinners and pull them out of the fire, you will find
that you are spending so much time thinking about yourself that you can’t help
anybody else. This is a great and sore
evil! I have met thousands of sinners
who became inquirers, and went to a church for advice, but the church was
unable to do anything for them, because those church members weren’t sure that
they were Christians themselves. You
ask them to pray for sinners, and they can only say, “Lord, have mercy on
me”. Now, is this not a great
evil? Indeed, it is an evil of the
greatest magnitude.
Unless professing
Christians have this testimony, they can do very little for God. I have heard ministers during a time of
Revival say that they could neither preach nor pray! They had so little evidence of their own acceptance with God that
their mouths were shut. What a great
evil is this! What can they do for
others, when they are in this lamentable condition themselves? They cannot go out and work, as men of God
should work. With what confidence can
they preach if they really don’t know that they believe it themselves, or hold
forth the salvation that they haven’t touched, tasted, or handled! All such people are a dead weight on the
cause of Christ, and hang like millstones round the necks of those who would
otherwise pull sinners out of the fire.
What minister has not found it true, that when his people were living
without knowing that they pleased God, that a tremendous number of difficulties
are thrown in the way of good being done!
When the church can only depend on the minister, they are in a very sad
condition. Perhaps it is true with some
of you that you hang like dead weights on the energies and prayers of those who
are laboring for the salvation of souls.
And this always will be true if you don’t have the testimony that you
please God.
Professing Christians,
where are you? What are you doing? If you don’t have the testimony that you
please God, you are stumbling blocks.
You misrepresent religion! If
you say you are Christians, if you claim to be a child of God; then you should
have the witness of the Spirit and hold forth the blessedness of such a
salvation to others.
But what are the
facts? Sadly, many professing
Christians are always complaining of their leanness and their trials. If you listen to them, you’d think that God
was the hardest master that anybody ever had to serve; that He deals out His
pleasures so sparingly that everybody becomes discouraged! Many times I have heard people say, “if that
person's religion is the religion of Christ, it may be fine for someone on
their death-bed, but I would not want to live in the world with it. Must I go around mourning all my life and
never have any happiness? If so, I am
afraid of such a religion!” And they
would have every reason to be afraid.
(3.) Without this
testimony, you cannot use God’s promises.
Many times I have heard people say, “if I knew that God accepted me, I
would gladly apply to myself such and such promises, but they are meant for the
children of God, and I don’t know whether I am a child of God or not. Oh, if I only knew that I was a child of
God, I would claim all the promises as my own”. Perhaps some of you would say this. Now, the promises are in the Bible, but the Bible may rot on your
shelves without you making any use of them because you don’t have the testimony
that they belong to you because you don’t know if you are a child of God.
(4.) You must have this
testimony to have a rational hope of salvation. What reason does a man have to believe that he is personally
saved if he doesn’t have this evidence?
I know some people hope that they will be saved, but they are really
living in a state of condemnation. But,
is this a rational hope? I say,
NO! This is not a rational hope. I know that these people cling to the hope
that they somehow will be saved, but they certainly have no right to cling to
it.
(5.) You must have this
testimony to have peace of mind. No man
is at peace until God speaks to him.
But as soon as God speaks peace to his soul, he is at peace. But God will not speak peace to his soul
until he comes into a state of mind that God is at peace with.
(6.) This testimony is indispensable
to Christian liberty. Many professing
Christians have no concept of Christian liberty. They think that Christian liberty is some kind of license that
they have that came from the imputed righteousness of Christ: and as Christ’s
righteousness is imputed to them, that allows them to be personally sinful and
yet acceptable to God. I know that
salvation does not depend on personal holiness; but without it, a person is not
a Christian. No man, therefore,
possesses Christian liberty, unless he has the testimony that he pleases God.
(7.) This testimony is
indispensable to Christian joy. No
individual has true joy without it. The
mind will be so oppressed with a sense of guilt that the person will hardly be
able to speak a word. From day to day he
will go, bowed down with a sense of guilt.
Real Christian joy that comes from love, communion with God, and deep
sympathy with Him, is a kind of joy that those who do not have this testimony
don’t understand. And let me say, it is
very important for Christians to be cheerful, for it recommends their religion
to others, and often very materially influences their conduct. Four or five years ago, one of the principal
officers in the State of Ohio, Judge Andrews, an unconverted man, came to hear
me preach; and when I had finished, he came and asked me if I would go with him
to see an individual that evening. I
agreed; and it was, to me, a great treat indeed. We went to see a lovely Christian; and, as soon as we sat down,
she began to talk with great cheerfulness and fullness, of what the Lord had
done for her soul. Judge Andrews sat
and listened with the greatest attention, and by and by a tear trembled in his
eye, and the old lady went on conversing with such cheerfulness, that it
riveted him, and he sat for three quarters of an hour to hear that woman talk.
When we left, he said to me, if this is the religion of Jesus Christ, I am
determined that I will not rest till I possess it and know what it is: and
there is good reason to believe that he did not rest until he knew what it was
by experience.
Now, there are many
situations like this where people, unconsciously perhaps, influence those
around them. I have often heard men say
when they have seen religion cheerfully exhibited, “that is the religion for
me, that is the religion which meets the demand of my being”. Without joy, you can’t say that someone is
very useful. Let a minister preach to
his people without it, and the most he will do will be to preach them into
condemnation. A minister once said to
me, “Brother Finney, tell me what you think is the defect in my ministry; I
find that sinners are brought under conviction, but they get no further.” I only replied briefly at the time, but I
prepared a sermon a few days later on the seventh chapter of Romans,
contrasting it with the eighth chapter.
I showed that the seventh chapter described a state of bondage, of law;
but the eighth chapter described a state of Christian freedom. That minister, sat and listened as I
preached the sermon, and when I had finished, he came to me and said, “Brother
Finney, if what you have been preaching is true, I don’t know anything about
religion, for my experience does not go any further than the seventh
chapter.”
“Now”, I replied, “you
have answered the question that you asked me the other day. You do not know
what it is to have freedom, and how can you preach a gospel that you do not
understand?” The man did not live long
in that state.
Let me say here, that it
is a sad fact that most religious teachers today don’t go any further than the
seventh chapter of Romans. They can
only go so far and then they cry out, “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from this body of death!”
(Rom 7:24) But they cannot go on into
the eighth chapter and say, “There is therefore now no condemnation to those
who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according
to the Spirit. For the law of the
Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and
death. For what the law could not do in
that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the
likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh,
that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not
walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit”. (Rom 8:1-4)
Now, a minister cannot lead his people any further than he goes himself;
and, if his congregation were to receive the liberty of the gospel in some
other way than by his means, he would pour cold water on them, and tell them
that they were getting into a strange fanatical state of mind. But how different it would be if the
minister comes into this liberty that the gospel is calculated to give.
I now come to consider--
VI. SOME OF THE
REASONS WHY SO FEW PEOPLE SEEM TO HAVE THIS TESTIMONY!
When I say few, I do not
mean to say that the whole number is small, for I am happy to know that it is
not. Wherever I go, I find people who
understand it, and when they hear the sound, they recognize it as the
gospel. But looking at the overall
population, comparatively few know what it is like to enjoy this testimony.
(1.)The reason why they
don’t have it is not because it is so hard to please God. God says that His commandments are not
harsh. He is not exacting and hard to
please. He expects a willing mind in
His service, but He does not expect from us anything that we don’t have; only
what we do have. If our heart and will
is right, God accepts it; and the one who gives his heart and will to God shall
have the testimony that he pleases God.
So that when one does not have the testimony that he pleases God, it’s
not because God is unwilling to manifest His pleasure when He is pleased. Some people seem to think that it is dangerous
to praise even virtue itself. Flattery
is always dangerous, but condemnation is only just when it is deserved.
Take a family, for
example, where the children are trying to please their parents. When a child knows that he has done his very
best, if he does not receive any positive response from his parents, he will
feel that he has been treated unfairly.
The child will soon stop trying his best because he soon feels that it
is impossible to please his parents and win their approval. The same is true with a wife who is always
trying to please her husband. If he is
never pleased, she will give up trying, because she sees that it is useless to
try. God, in His government, places
this demand in our nature. Let sin be
put away from any moral agent, and God loves the agent and manifests His
pleasure; it is in His very nature for Him to do so.
There is one exception to
this rule. God in a very remarkable and
marvelous way hid His face from Christ.
On the cross, Christ became the representative embodiment of sin, and it
was necessary that God should make a public demonstration of His hatred of
sin. Although Christ was personally
holy, since He had become the representative of a sinful race, it was necessary
that He should have to utter that agonizing cry, “My God, my God, why have You
forsaken me?” But ordinarily when
anybody pleases God, God is just as willing to reveal His pleasure, as the most
lenient of parents have to praise their children when they do right. Some
people, I know, are unwilling to praise their children, and I know that by such
conduct they greatly harm their children.
When the wife is not praised for her kindness to her husband, or the
husband to his wife, or children for their obedience to their parents, a great
injustice and a tremendous amount of harm is done.
(2.) The reason why so
few have this testimony is because few really please God. Few really aim to please Him. If they were aware that they sincerely aim
to please God, they would expect to please Him; but knowing that they do not
live for that end, they can’t rationally expect to please Him, and of course
they can’t expect any manifestation of His pleasure.
(3.) Another reason that
so few have this testimony is that they consent to live without it. If men consent
to live without knowing whether they please or displease God, they won’t have
the testimony that they please Him.
(4.) Many do not have it,
because they are more concerned about the approval of men than the approval of
God. They care so little about pleasing
God, that they won’t ask what will please Him, and would rather do things to
displease God than displease man. These
people can’t have the testimony that we’re talking about.
(5.) Many people seem
satisfied with only a negative testimony as long as they can manage not to have
a conscious sense of condemnation.
Dearly beloved, as I have
gone over these points, have I been describing the condition of any of you? You
are all strangers to me, and I always feel embarrassed to preach to people when
I don’t know their spiritual state. God
only knows, therefore, whether the things spoken tonight describe your situation
or not.
Let me close with
a few remarks.
(1.) When
a soul once had the testimony that it pleased God and then lost this testimony,
it cannot rest without it. Let an
individual who once enjoyed the testimony that he pleased God fall into sin,
and that person will be among the most miserable and wretched of mankind.
(2.) This accounts for
the fact that backsliders in heart are the unhappiest people. The man that backslides in heart from God is
wretched. I deeply pity the man who is
a backslider. I pity the husband who
has a backsliding wife. I pity the wife
who has a backsliding husband. I pity
the children who have backsliding parents.
I pity the parents who have backsliding children. I pity the minister who has a backsliding
church, and I pity the church who has a backsliding minister. You see, the backslider in heart is filled
with his own ways. He is wretched
wherever he is, and the language of his heart will often be--
Oh, where can rest
be found? Rest, for the weary soul.”
Perhaps some of
you remember, and often say,
“Those peaceful
hours I once enjoyed, how sweet their memory still.”
Once you walked
with God, and had the testimony that you pleased Him. You once enjoyed His testimony, and now you have fallen. Well, let me ask you, are you uncomfortable
in that fallen state? Do your dreams
torment you? Are you afraid to be
alone? Are you afraid to commune with
your own heart, and be honest with yourselves?
If you are in the condition that I’ve been describing, you are very
unhappy and wretched, wherever you are.
You may try to be happy and comfortable, but you never can be until you
return to God. But when you have done
this, and when God’s frown is taken away, and He smiles on you, then you may
have peace. Will you return now? Even though your sins are great, will you
return? Do you feel that your sins are
so very great that you can’t even lift up your eyes to heaven! Neither could the publican, but he struck
his breast and cried, “God be merciful to me a sinner”.
You
can do that! If you cannot hold up your
head before God, you can get down into the dust, where the Psalmist was when he
cried out in the agony of his soul to God and confessed his sin before
God. You can do that, and the question
is, will you do it?
(3.)
What I have said tonight to Christians also applies to anxious sinners. Sinners, you can have the testimony that you
please God if you give yourself up to please Him. If you renounce your sins, and have no fellowship with iniquity,
so great is His grace, that through His son Jesus Christ you may breathe the
spirit of liberty and love and possess the fullness of the blessing of the
gospel of Christ. If you will only
believe; if you will only make up your minds to walk with God, you may know
what it means to have the testimony that you please Him.
Some
of you may be ready to say, “Oh, if I could have this testimony, there is
nothing that I would not do; there is no part of the world to which I would not
go if I could be accepted by God. Yes,
you want to buy it; but, until you will are content to do the will of God, and
cast yourselves totally on the grace of Christ for it, you will never possess
it. You may say, “I have thought,
desired, and prayed, and promised that I would do anything if God would accept
me”. Did it ever occur to you that
there was self-righteousness in your desire to do something to obtain this? Anything other than the means that God has
appointed is a self-righteous effort.
It is not very difficult to come to Christ; why don’t you come to Him? Do you ask, “can I come to Christ? Can I
come to Christ just as I am? Will he accept
me?”
Yes,
you may come to Him and He will accept you.
Hear what he says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden,
and I will give you rest”. (Matt 11:28) If you come to Christ, you will have the
testimony that you please God. That you
believe on Him and cast yourselves on Him, is all God requires of you. And now, you who claim to be Christians but
are not, is it not best for you one and all to say, “by the grace of God we
will have this testimony.” What minister,
what professor, what sinner in this house will say, “If by the grace of God it
is offered to me, I will receive it and enjoy it, or I will die for it. O God, I will accept Your offer of mercy.
Lord Jesus, I believe Your gospel and I accept it.”
You
who have the testimony that you please God, I know that in the depth of your
emotions you often groan within you because of the miserable death that many
who pretend to be alive are experiencing.
Your souls pray for them because God’s spirit is in the midst of you,
and now is the time for a resurrection from the dead. What do you say sinner?
Will you rise from the dead and come forth? Christ calls you, and presents you with His life-giving
blood. He even puts it to your
lips. Do you push it away? Don’t you want the testimony that God is reconciled
to you? Don’t you desire the testimony
that you please God? If you do, then
believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will have the very thing that you
need. Now we are going to God in
prayer. Shall we go on your belief in
the name of Christ? Who of you are
prepared to go with us to the throne of grace, and cast your souls on God? What individual now in bondage is willing to
be released? Come and turn away from
all your unbelief, and cast yourself on Christ. Empty every vessel. Turn
it upside down and empty it, and then bring it to Christ, and you shall be
filled. Will you come? Will you come? WILL YOU COME? Let your
heart answer! Let your heart respond! Let it speak out, LORD JESUS MY SOUL HEARS,
AND I COME, I COME. Amen.