The religion of the Bible is for sinners who need help. Its salvation is for those who are in a lost condition. You must admit this fact, or go without it. If you cannot consent to be saved by interposing grace, you must be left to nature, and the result will be at last, you will not be saved at all. If you will not brook to be told that you are “poor and miserable and blind and naked,” and that you must find in Christ Jesus a Rock higher than you, and trust in his atonement to remove your guilt, and pray for the Holy Spirit to wash and sanctify you, then you must do the best you can without a Saviour. You may carry your head up a while, and scorn to be a suppliant; you may plume yourself upon your independence and self-reliance, and ask no favors of God or man; you may disdain to utter a prayer, or a confession; but your glory will be short. Death will soon strip you of your pride, and rob you of your boasting. God will call you to the judgment-seat, and put your manhood to the test.
My dying friend, you cannot keep your present position; you must abandon it ere long. Why not do it now? Why wait till you are driven from it to eternal disgrace, when you may now turn from it, and secure thereby eternal life? You have got to bow; you have got to pray; you have got to awake to a conviction of your guilt, either now, or in eternity. Why not now—now, when help is near you, and salvation is offered you—now, when the Rock that is higher than you is accessible to you, and you are bidden to hide in its friendly clefts from the gathering storm of Jehovah’s wrath?
You may refuse to look upon it now; but not so hereafter. From your deep abyss of gloom your eye will see it far away in the upper world of glory, with the glad companies of the redeemed sitting upon its summit in eternal rest and peace, and singing with the angels. And the spontaneous prayer which would break from your lips, “Lead me to yonder Rock that is higher than I,” will be choked and silenced by the awful conviction, that between you and it there is a great gulf fixed, a chasm which no tears can bridge, no prayers can span. Now the Rock is near. The Saviour reaches out his hand. Grasp it, sinner, by faith. Hold on to it and climb to the strong-holds, or you must sink to hell.
II.
The Sun in his Might.
LET THEM THAT LOVE HIM BE AS THE SUN WHEN HE GOETH FORTH IN HIS MIGHT. Judges 5:31.
Thus closes the song of Deborah, the judge and heroine of Israel. Its theme has been the thrilling events of the great battle with Sisera and the Canaanites, the victory of Balak, and the overthrow of Jabin and his hosts. But at its close she rises from the particular event to a general prediction, in the form of a prayer for the destruction of all the enemies of God, and the safety and blessedness of his own people. “So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord; but let them that love him be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might.”
“Them that love him” is a brief, but most fitting description of true believers, whether Jewish or Christian. Saints are distinguished from others, not only in their relations to God, but in their affections towards him. Reconciled to God through Jesus Christ, they love him with a reverential, obedient, and constant love. Such are, in the highly poetic language of the prophetess, compared to the sun when he goeth forth in his might.