[Continued from previous issues] If you remain unconverted, consider the following
1. Your raging lusts miserably enslave you.
While unconverted, you are a slave to sin; it reigns over you, and holds you under its dominion. There is not another tyrant as sin. O the vile and fearful work that it engages its servants in!
Would it not pierce your heart to see the company of poor creatures drudging and toiling to carry logs and fuel for their own burning? This is the employment of sin. Even while they bless themselves in their unrighteous gains, while they sing in their pleasure, they are but treasuring up vengeance for their eternal burning; and flinging in oil to make the flame rage the fiercer. Who would serve such a master, whose work is drudgery, whose wages are death?
What a woeful spectacle was the poor wretch possessed with the legion! Would it not have grieved your heart to see him among the tombs Gutting and wounding himself? This is yourself; such is your work; every stroke is a thrust at your heart. Conscience indeed is now asleep; but when death and judgment shall bring you to your senses, then will you feel the anguish in every wound.
The convinced sinner is an instance of the miserable bondage of sin. Conscience flies upon him, and tells him the end of these things; and yet he is such a slave to his lusts that on he goes, though he sees it will be his perdition. When the temptation comes, lust breaks the cords of all his vows and promises, and carries him headlong to his own destruction.
2. The furnace of eternal vengeance is heated ready for you.
Hell and destruction open their mouths upon you; they gape for you; they groan for you, waiting as it were with a greedy eye as you stand on the brink if the wrath of men be “as the roaring of a lion” (Prov. 19:12), what is the wrath of the infinite God?
If the burning furnace heated in Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery rage, when he commanded it to be made seven times hotter, was so fierce as to burn up even those that drew near to throw the three children in, how hot is that burning of the Almighty’s fury? Surely this is seventy times seven more fierce. “Can thine heart endure, or can thine hands be strong in the days that I shall deal with thee?” says the Lord (Ezek. 22:14).
Oh sinner, stop here, and consider. If you are a man, and not a senseless block, consider. Think where you are standing — upon the very brink of destruction. As the Lord liveth, and as your soul liveth, there is but a step between you and this. You do not know when you lie down, but you may be in hell before morning. You do not know when you rise up [in the morning], but you may drop [dead] before the night. Dare you make light of this? Divine wrath is a fierce, devouring, everlasting, unquenchable fire, and this must be your portion, unless you consider your ways, and speedily turn to the Lord by a sound conversion.
3. The gospel itself binds the sentence of eternal damnation upon you.
If you continue in your unconverted state, know that the Gospel denounces a much sorer condemnation than ever would have been for the transgression of the first covenant [the Old Testament]. Is it not a dreadful case to have the Gospel itself fill its mouth with threats against you? Hear the terror of [rejecting the gospel] of the Lord:
“He that believeth not shall be condemned.”
“Except ye repent, ye shall all perish.”
“This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light.”
“He that believeth not, the wrath of God abideth on him.”
“He that despised Moses’ law died without mercy: of how much sorer punishment shall he be thought worthy who hath trodden underfoot the Son of God?”
And is this true indeed? Is this your misery? Yea, it is as true as God is. Better open your eyes now while you may remedy it, than blind and harden yourself till, to your eternal sorrow, you feel what you would not believe. Oh why do you not consider where you will spend eternity? Death is at hand; the Judge is even at the door. Yet a little while and “time shall be no longer.”
The One Remedy
Awake! Awake! O sinner, arise and take your flight. There is but one door that you may flee by, and that is the narrow door of conversion and the new birth. Look again over the miseries of the unconverted. Is it nothing to have all the attributes of God engaged against you? Can you live without His favor? Can you escape His hands, or endure His vengeance? Do you laugh at hell and destruction, or can you drink the cup of the Almighty’s fury?
Oh, do not contend with God. Repent and be converted, so none of this shall come upon you. “Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.”
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