The Loaded Wagon

The Loaded Wagon
A SERMON DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, AUGUST 24, 1862, BY REV. C. H.
SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.
"Behold, I am pressed under you, as a cart is pressed that is full of
sheaves."
Amos 2:13.
THE other Sunday morning we went into the corn fields to glean with
Boaz and Ruth. And I trust that many of the timid and faint-hearted
were encouraged to partake of the handfuls which are let fall on
purpose for them by the order of our generous Lord. We go, today, to
the gate of the harvest field with another object–to see the wagon
piled up aloft with many sheaves, come creaking forth–making ruts as
the toiling horses drag it from the field. We come with gratitude to
God, thanking Him for the harvest, blessing Him for so much of
favorable weather and praying Him to continue the same till the last
shock of corn shall be brought in and the farmers everywhere shall
shout the "Harvest Home."
What a picture is a wagon loaded with corn for you and of me, as loaded
with God's mercies! From our cradle up till now, every day has added a
sheaf. What more could He do for us than He has done? He has daily
loaded us with benefits. Despite the sad affliction in the North, we
are nationally a favored people. Both in Providence and in gracious
privilege, He has blessed us above all people that are upon the face of
the earth. While other countries have been crushed by tyrants, ravaged
by war, or left in the thick darkness of superstition, we are free–we
are blessed with the light of Heaven–we have the Gospel in our
streets, the Bible in our houses, and the Sunday as our choicest
heritage.
O England! You are like a farm wagon creaking under the mercies of God!
Brothers and Sisters, we are each of us like the cart that is pressed
down because it is full of sheaves. The innumerable mercies of God are
piled upon us high as the mountains, nor can our memory recount the
tokens of the tenderness and loving kindness of the Most High. Let us
adore His goodness and yield Him our cheerful gratitude.
Alas–and how many times shall I repeat that pathetic
interjection–alas! alas! Alas–that such a metaphor should be capable
of another reading? That while God loads us with mercy, we should load
Him with sin? While He continually heaps on sheaf after sheaf of favor,
we also add iniquity unto iniquity, till the weight of our sin becomes
intolerable to the Most High, and He cries out by reason of the burden,
saying, "I am pressed under you, as a cart is pressed that is full of
sheaves."
Our text begins with a "Behold!" and well it may. "Beholds" are put in
the Bible as sometimes a hand is put in the margin of old books, to
indicate to the reader something worthy of notice. Or, again, "Beholds"
are put in the Scriptures as signs are put out in front of houses of
business to attract attention. There is something new, something
important, something deeply impressive and worthy of attention,
wherever we see a "Behold" in Sacred Scripture. I see this "Behold"
standing as it were, like a maiden upon the steps of the house of
Wisdom, crying, "Turn in here, O you that are wise, and listen to the
voice of God while He speaks to you."
Let us open our eyes that we may see. Let us fix both our eyes intently
that we may "behold," and may God make a way through our eyes and ears
to our heart–so that deep repentance and self-abhorrence may take hold
upon us– because of our evil conduct towards our gracious God.
Now, it is to be understood, dear Friends, before we proceed farther,
that our text is but a figure, since God is not to be oppressed by man.
All the sin that man can commit can never disturb the serenity of His
perfections, nor cause so much as a wave upon the sea of His
everlasting calm. He does but speak to us after the manner of man and
bring down the sublimities and mysteries of Heaven to the feebleness
and ignorance of earth. He talks to us as a great father may talk to
his little child, and He uses images which are rather adapted to human
frailty than to Divine infinity.
Just, then, as a cart has the axles bent and–to use an old Saxon
word–as the wheels "screak" under the excessive load, so the Lord says
that under the load of human guilt He is pressed down, until He cries
out, because He can bear no longer the iniquity of those that offend
Him. We shall now turn to the first point, this morning. O that the
Holy Spirit may make it pointed to our consciences!
I. The first and most apparent truth in the text is, that SIN IS VERY
GRIEVOUS AND BURDENSOME TO GOD.
Be astonished, O heavens and be amazed, O earth, that God should speak
of being pressed and weighed down! I do not read anywhere so much as
half a suggestion that the whole burden of creation is any weight to
the Host High. "He takes up the isles as a very little thing." "He
weighs the mountains in scales and the hills in balances." Neither sun,
nor moon, nor stars, nor all the ponderous orbs which His Omnipotence
has created, cost Him any labor whatever in their sustenance. The
heathens might picture Atlas as stooping beneath the tremendous load of
the world–but the eternal God, who bears up the pillars of the
universe, "faints not, neither is He weary."
Nor do I find even the most distant approach to a suggestion, that
Providence fatigues its Lord. He watches both by night and day. His
power goes forth every moment. It is He who brings forth Mazzaroth in
his season and guides Arctu-rus with his sons. He bears up the
foundations of the earth! And He holds the cornerstone thereof. He
causes the day-spring to know its place, and sets a boundary to
darkness and the shadow of death. All things are supported by the power
of His hand, and there is nothing without Him. If He withdrew His
might, back to annihilation must all things go.
Just as in a moment, foam subsides into the wave that bears it, and is
lost forever, so would the universe depart if the eternal God did not
daily sustain it. Nor has this incessant working diminished His
strength, nor is there any failing or thought of failing. He does all
things, and when they are done they are as nothing in His sight. But
strange, oh, passing strange, marvelous, miraculous among miracles, sin
burdens God, though the world cannot! And iniquity presses the Most
High, though the whole tremendous load of Providence is as the small
dust of the balance.
Ah, you careless men, sons of Adam, you think sin a trifle. And as for
you, you sons of Belial, you count it sport and say, "He regards not.
He sees not. How does God know? And if He knows, He cares not for our
sins." Learn from the Book of God that so far is this from being the
truth, that your sins are a grief to Him, a burden and a load to Him,
till, like a cart that is pressed down with sheaves, so is He pressed
down by human guilt.
I think this will be very clear if we meditate for a moment upon what
sin is, and what sin does. Sin is the great de-spoiler of all God's
works. It was sin that turned an archangel into an archfiend, and
angels of light into spirits of evil. It was sin that looked on Eden
and withered every leaf in its garden and blasted all its flowers.
Before sin had come, the Creator said of the newly made earth, "It is
very good." But when sin had entered, it grieved God at His very heart
that He had made such a creature as man. Nothing can despoil the beauty
in which God delights so much as sin, for sin mars His image and erases
His superscription.
Moreover, sin makes God's creatures unhappy, and shall He not,
therefore, abhor it? God never designed that any creature that He made
should be miserable. He made the creatures on purpose that they should
be glad. He gave the birds their songs, the flowers their perfume, the
air its balm. He gave to nature the smiling sun, and even to night its
coronet of stars, for He intended that smiles should be His perpetual
worship, and that joy should be the atmosphere which His creatures
breathed. But sin has made God's favorite creature a wretch, brought
down His most glorious offspring, made in His own image, to become
naked and poor and miserable and lost.
Therefore God hates sin and is pressed down under it, because it makes
the objects of His love unhappy at their heart. All the unhappiness
that we have this morning comes directly or indirectly from sin.
Iniquity is the mother of every human pang. Oh, how well may God hate
it when He sees His own dearly beloved children made to wear furrows on
their brow and tears in their eyes, because of this vile, this
abominable thing called sin.
Moreover, remember, Beloved, that sin attacks God in all His
attributes. Sin attacks Him on His Throne and stabs at His existence.
What is sin, Sinner? Is it not an insult to God's wisdom? God bids you
do His will. When you do the contrary it is because you do as much as
say, "I know best what is good for me." You do in effect declare that
infinite wisdom is in error, and that you, the creature of a day, can
judge better then your God what shall be the path of happiness for you.
Sin impugns His goodness. By sin you actually declare that God has
denied you that which would make you happy, which is not the part of a
good, tender, and loving Father.
A generous God denies nothing to His creatures but that which is
harmful. But inasmuch as you think sin to be pleasant and profitable,
you cast a slur upon the benevolence and loving kindness of God. And
when He is such a God, so full of tenderness that His very name is
"Love," this is no slight burden to His holy soul, to feel when He
perceives you think you could do better for yourself than He is willing
to do–and that He has cruelly robbed you of pleasure and denied you
that which would be for your good. Sin cuts at the Lord's wisdom with
one hand and at His goodness with the other.
And see, sin also abuses the mercy of God. When you, as many of you
have done, sin with the higher hand because of His long-suffering
towards you–when, because you have no sickness, no losses, no crosses,
therefore you spend your time in revelry and obstinate rebellion–what
is this but taking the mercy which was meant for your good and turning
it into mischief? It is no small grief to the loving Father to see His
substance spent with harlots in riotous living. I tell you it is no
slight thing to the Father of the prodigal to see Him wish to fill his
belly with the husks the swine eat. This touches Him at the very quick.
He cannot endure it, that His children should be thus degraded as to
turn even the mercy which would woo them to repentance, into a ground
why they should sin the more against Him.
Besides, let me remind the careless and impenitent this morning, that
every sin is a defiance of Divine power. In effect it is lifting your
puny fists against the majesty of Heaven and defying God to destroy
you. Every time you sin, you know that sin will lead to your soul's
destruction. If, then, you beard the Omniscient One even to His face,
and while under the hand that can crush you, you dare to revolt and to
transgress, you do as much as dare and defy the Lord to prove whether
He can maintain His Law or not. Is this a slight thing, that a worm,
the creature of a day, should defy the God of Ages, the God that fills
and upholds all things by the Word of His power?
Well may He be weary when He has to bear with such provocations and
insults as these! Mention what attribute you will, and sin has blotted
it. Speak of God in any relationship you choose, and sin has cast a
slur upon Him. It is evil, only evil, and that continually. In every
view of it, it must be offensive to the Most High. Sinner, do you know
that every act of disobedience to God's Law is virtually an act of high
treason? What do you do but seek to be God yourself, your own master,
your own lord? Every time you swerve from His will, it is to put your
will into its place. It is to make yourself a God and to undeify the
Most High.
And is this a little offense, to snatch from His brow the crown and
from His hand the scepter? I tell you it is such an act that Heaven
itself could not stand unless it were resented. And if this crime were
suffered to go unpunished, the wheels of Heaven's commonwealth would be
taken from their axles and the whole frame of nature would be unhinged.
Such a treason against God shall certainly be punished.
And to crown all, sin is an onslaught upon God Himself, for every
sinner is an atheist at heart. Let his religious profession be what it
may, he has said in his heart, "No God." He wishes that there were no
Law and no Supreme Ruler. He desires that God might be forgotten. God
is not in all his thoughts. Is this a trifle? To be a deicide? To slay
God? To desire to put Him out of His own world? For the creature to
declare war against the God that made him and to wish that God might
cease to be–is this a thing to be winked at? Can the Most High hear it
and not be pressed down beneath its weight?
Ah, I pray you do not think that I would make a needless outcry against
sin and disobedience. It is not in the power of human imagination to
exaggerate the evil of sin, nor will it ever be possible for mortal
lips, though they should be touched like those of Elijah, with a live
coal from off the altar, to thunder out the ten-thousandth part of the
enormity of the least sin against God. Think, dear Friends! We are His
creatures and yet we will not do His will! We are fed by Him. The
breath in our nostrils He gives to us, and yet we spend that breath in
murmuring and in rebellion.
Once more, we are always in the sight of our Omniscient God, and yet
the Presence of God is not enough to compel us to obedience. Surely, if
a man should insult the law in the very presence of the lawgiver–if
the king were insulted to his face–that were not to be tolerated. But
this is your case and mine. We must confess, "Against You, You only,
have I sinned and done this evil in Your sight." And we must remember
that we are doing all this and we know what we are doing. We are not
sinning like the Hottentot. We are not pulling God's Law to pieces like
some blind New Zealander.
We, in England, sin against extraordinary light and sevenfold
knowledge. And is this a light thing? Can you expect that God shall
wink at us and pass by such offenses as these? Oh that these lips had
language, that this heart could burn for once! If I could declare the
horrible infamy of sin it would make the blood chill in even a haughty
Pharaoh's veins, and proud Nebuchadnezzar might bow his head in fear.
It is a horrible thing, indeed, to have rebelled against the Most High.
God have mercy upon His servants and forgive them.
This is our first point but I cannot teach it to you. Only God can
teach it by His Spirit. O that the Holy Spirit may make you feel that
sin is exceedingly sinful, because it is grievous and burdensome to
God.
II. Secondly, SOME SINS ARE MORE ESPECIALLY GRIEVOUS TO GOD. The
connection of our text will help you to see the force of this
observation. There is no such thing as a little sin, but still, there
are degrees of guilt, and it were folly to say that a sinful thought
has in it the same extent of evil as a sinful act. A filthy imagination
is sinful– wholly sinful and greatly sinful–but still the act has
attained a higher degree of provocation.
Now, there are sins that especially provoke God. In the connection of
the text we read that licentiousness does this. The people seem, from
the 7th verse, to have gone to a very high degree of fornication and
lecherousness. This sin is not uncommon in our day. Let our midnight
streets and our divorce courts be the witness. Perhaps the saddest
proof that society is far from pure is found in the fact that seducers
and fornicators, if they are but gentlemen, may enter respectable
society. Brand the miscreants, I say. If the woman is shut out as a
harlot, what shall be done unto the lustful maker and cherisher of
harlots? If Hell burns hotter at one time than another, it is for those
who make what should have been a temple of the Holy Spirit into an
instrument of rebellion against both man and God.
Oppression, too, according to the text, is another great sin. The
Prophet speaks of selling the poor for a pair of shoes. And there are
such who would grind the widow and the orphan to the last extreme and
make their laborers toil for nothing. How many business men we have who
never knew what "hearts of mercy" were? Men form themselves into
societies, and then exact an outrageous usury upon loans from the
unhappy men who fall into their hands. Cunning legal quibbles and
crafty evasions of just debts often amount to heavy oppression and are
sure to bring down the anger of the Most High.
Then again, it seems that idolatry and blasphemy are most certainly
offensive to Him and have a high degree of hei-nousness. He says that
they drank the wine of false gods, so if any man set up his belly as
his god, or his gold, or his wealth, and lives to these, instead of
living to the Most High, he has offended by idolatry.
Especially is blasphemy a God-provoking sin. For blasphemy there is no
excuse. As George Herbert says, "Lust and wine plead a pleasure. There
is gain to be pleaded for avarice, but the cheap swearer from his open
sluice lets his soul run for nothing." There is nothing gained by it.
There can be no pleasure in cursing–blasting one's limbs and damning
one's soul–this must be offending for offending's sake, and therefore
this is a high and crying sin. God does pardon it, He is willing to
pardon it now–but it nevertheless weighs upon His heart and He cannot
suffer it to go unpunished unless it be repented of.
Some sins make the Lord very weary of man. Now, I do not know who you
are, many of you this morning, but I have no doubt there are some among
you to whom this word may be a personal accusation. Do I address the
lecherous, or the oppressive, or the swearer? Do I address the profane?
Ah, Soul, what a mercy God has borne with you for so long. The time
will come, however, when He will say, "Ah, I will ease Me of My
adversaries," and how easily will He cast you off and appoint you an
awful destruction.
Again, while some sins are thus grievous to God for their peculiar
heinousness, many men are especially obnoxious to God because of the
length of their sin. That gray-headed man–how many times has he
provoked the Most High? Why, those who are but lads have cause to count
their years, and apply their hearts unto wisdom because of the length
of time they have lived in rebellion. But what shall I say of you that
have been half a century in open war against God–and some of you
sixty, seventy–what if I said near upon eighty years? Ah, you have had
eighty years of mercies and eighty years of forgetfulness. Eighty years
of bounty, and eighty years of ingratitude and insult! O God, well may
You be wearied by the length and number of man's sins!
Furthermore, God takes special note and feels a special weariness of
sin that is mixed with obstinacy. Oh, how obstinate some men are! They
will be damned. There is no helping them. They seem as if they would
leap the Alps to reach perdition, and swim through seas of fire that
they may destroy their own souls. I might tell you cases of men that
have been sore sick of fever, malaria, and cholera. They have recovered
from all–but have only recovered their health to return to their
wallowing in the mire.
Some of them have had such troubles in business, thick and threefold.
They were once in respectable circumstances, but they spent their
living riotously and they became poor. They still struggle on in sin.
They are growing poorer still– most of their clothes have gone to the
pawn shop. But they will not turn from the gin shop and the haunt of
vice. An- other child is dead! Ah, has that man yonder a dead child at
home? And the wife is sick and nothing but starvation looks the family
in the face!
But they have gone on still with a high hand and an outstretched arm.
This is obstinacy, indeed. Sinner! God will let you have your own way
one of these days, and that way will be your everlasting ruin. But God
is weary of all here who have thus set themselves to do mischief, and
who against warnings, and invitations and entreaties, and light, and
knowledge, have determined to go on in sin.
The context seems to tell us that ingratitude is intensely burdensome
to God. He tells the people how He brought them up out of Egypt. How He
cast out the Amorites. How He raised up their sons for Prophets and
their young men for Nazarites. And yet they rebelled against Him! Oh,
dear Friends, this was one of the things that pricked my heart when I
first came to God as a guilty sinner–not so much the peculiar
heinousness of my outward life, as the peculiar mercies that I had
enjoyed. How many of us have been detestably ungrateful! What a life
has our life been!
Oh, how generous God has been. Why there are some of us who never had a
want. All our wants have been supplied. God has never cast us into
poverty, nor left us to infamy, nor given us up to evil example. He has
kept us moral, and made us love His House even when we did not love
Him. And all this He has done year after year. What poor returns have
we made! To you, His people, what joy He has given, what deliverances,
what love, what comfort, what bliss–and yet after all this, to think
that we should sin to His very face! Oh, well may He be as a cart that
is pressed down, that is full of sheaves!
O my Hearers, I know I address some to whom this may come home very
pointedly. What? When you were nearly drowned, were you snatched from
the jaws of death? What? Were you rescued from sickness? Were you
blessed with that godly mother, and did that companion plead with you?
Have you a tender conscience? Do you feel that you cannot sin as others
do, for something checks you? All this is God's love. But if you will
still rebel against Him, despite all this, well may He arise in His
wrath and shake Himself in His hot displeasure. He will not always
strive with man. Justice shall soon have its day.
Let me observe, before I leave this point, that it seems from our text
that the Lord is so pressed, that He even cries out. Just as the cart,
when laden with the sheaves, groans under the weight, so the Lord cries
out under the load of sin. Have you ever heard those accents? "Hear, O
hearers and give, O earth: for the Lord has spoken, I have nourished
and brought up children and they have rebelled against Me." Hear
again–"Turn you, turn you from your evil ways. For why will you die, O
house of Israel?" Better still, hear it from the lips of Christ,
softened down to our own ears–"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you that kill
the Prophets and stone them which are sent unto you. How often would I
have gathered your children together, even as a hen gathers her
chickens under her wings and you would not!"
Sinner, God is cut to the heart by your sin! Your Creator grieves over
that which you laugh at. Your Creator cries out in His Spirit
concerning that which you think to be a trifle. "O do not this
abominable thing which I hate!" For God's sake do it not! We often say
"for God's sake," without knowing what we mean. But here, see what it
means–for the sake of God–that you grieve not your Creator–that you
cause not the Eternal One, Himself, to cry out against you. Cease you,
cease you, "from your evil ways. For why will you die, O house of
Israel?" I now leave those two points to pass on very briefly to the
next.
III. While it is true that sin is grievous to the Lord, it magnifies
His mercy when we see that HE BEARS THE LOAD. As the cart is not said
to break, but is only pressed, so is He pressed, and yet He bears. That
hymn we sung just before the sermon has more in it than hard hearts
will feel–
"Lord and am I yet afire,
Not in torments, not in Hell?
Still does Your good Spirit strive–
With the chief of sinners dwell?
Tell it unto sinners, tell,
I am, I am out of Hell."
If you and I were in God's place, should we have borne it? No, within a
week we should have burned the universe with fire, or trod it to powder
beneath our feet. If God were like modern lawgivers–and here I find no
fault with them, for the law of a commonwealth must be unyielding–but
if the Law of Heaven were as swift to punish as the law of man, where
would we be? I do not find you rising up to plead for the man who
murdered his children, and from some fancied injury shot his fellow
man. We seem to say by a unanimous verdict, "The wretch is guilty, let
him be punished."
What a universal howl has been going up this week against an offender
who once stood fair in the midst of us, but who turned aside long ago
unto iniquity. What man pleads for him? Who stands up and says, "Let
William Roupell go unpunished"? Yet, here is God, and here are we whose
offenses are ten times more heinous against God than any man's offenses
can be against man–and yet He spares us. Remember, He has all the
while full power to punish. He has but to wish and it is done–to lift
His finger and we are crushed before Him.
How many servants wait around Him ready to do His bidding? As the Roman
consul went out, attended by his lic-tors carrying the axe, so God is
ever attended by His executioners, who are ready to fulfill His
sentence. A stone, a tile from the roof of the house, a thunderbolt, a
puff of wind, a grain of dust, a broken blood vessel, and it is
over–and you are dead and in the hands of an angry God. Indeed, the
Lord has to hold in the followers of His wrath and restrain the
servants of His anger, for the heavens cry, "Why should we cover that
wretch's head?" Earth asks, "Why should I yield a harvest to the
sinner's plow?" The lightning and thunder say, "Let us smite the
rebel," and the seas roar upon the sinner, desiring him as their prey.
There is no greater proof of the Omnipotence of God, than His
long-suffering. It shows the greatest possible power for God to be able
to control Himself, to be able to keep in an anger which naturally must
boil, and restrain a fury which else must burn. Sinner, yet He bears
with you. The angels have been astonished at it–they thought He would
strike. But yet He bears with you. Have you ever seen a patient man
insulted? He has been met in the street by a villain who insults him
before a mob of boys. He bears it. The fellow spits in his face. He
bears it still. Now he strikes him. He endures it quietly.
"Give him a charge," says one. "No," says he, "I forgive him all." The
fellow knocks him down and rolls him in the ditch, but he bears it
still. Yes, and when he rises all covered with mire, he says, "If there
is anything that I can do to befriend you, I will do it now." Just at
that moment the wretch is arrested by a sheriffs officer for debt. The
man who has been insulted takes out his purse and pays the debt and
says, "Now you may go free." Look! The wretch spits in his face after
that!
Now you say "Let him feel what you can do. Let the law have its way
with him." Is there any room for patience now? So would it have been
with man. It has not been so with God. We have done much worse than
this and He has acted much more nobly. And still, I say, He bears it
all. Though like the cart, He is pressed under the load of sheaves, yet
like the cart the axle does not break. He bears the load. He bears with
impenitent sinners still.
IV. And this brings me now to pass over to the fourth head, on which I
would have your deepest attention. Many here present, I fear, have
never repented of sin. You have never seen it in the light of grieving
God, or else methinks you would not wish to grieve Him. But, perhaps
some of you feel how evil a thing rebellion is, but you want to know
how you can get rid of it.
This is our fourth head. Not only does God still bear with sin, but
GOD, IN THE PERSON OF HIS SON, DID
BEAR AND TAKE AWAY SIN. These words might have deep meaning if uttered
by the lips of Jesus, "I am pressed under you, as a cart is pressed
that is full of sheaves." Here stood the great problem. God must punish
sin, and yet He would have mercy. How could it be? Lo! Jesus comes to
be the Substitute far all who trust Him. See how they pile on Him the
sheaves of human sin! There are MY sheaves of sin–
"My soul looks back to see,
The burden You did bear,
When hanging on the cursed tree,
And hopes her guilt was there." Here are your sheaves, my Hearer–the
sheaves of all His chosen, the sins of all who shall believe in Him!
"The Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all." Yes, the Scripture
has it, "He is the propitiation for our sin and not for ours only, but
for the sins of the whole world." There they lie, heaps on heaps, till
He is pressed down like the wagon that groans as it moves along. He is
despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with
grief." See Him, He did "sweat as it were, great drops of blood falling
to the ground." "He that eats bread with Me has lifted up His heel
against Me."
They sold Him for thirty pieces of silver, a goodly price did they
value Him. Nevertheless, He is taken from prison and from judgment, and
who shall declare His generation? Herod mocks Him and makes nothing of
Him. Pilate jeers Him. They have smitten the Prince of Judah upon the
cheek. "I gave My back to the smiters, and My cheeks to them that
plucked off the hair. I hid not My face from shame and spitting." They
have tied Him to the pillar. They are beating Him with rods, not this
time forty stripes save one–there is no "save one" with Him, for the
chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and "with His stripes we are
healed."
Look at Him, like a cart pressed down with sheaves He goes through the
streets of Jerusalem. Well may you weep, you daughters of Jerusalem,
though He bids you dry your tears. They hoot Him as He walks along
bowed beneath the load of His own Cross which was the emblem of your
sin and mine. They have brought Him to Golgotha. They throw Him on His
back, they stretch out His hands and His feet. The accursed iron
penetrates the most tender parts of His body, where most of the nerves
congregate. They lift up the Cross. O bleeding Savior! Your time of woe
is come! They dash it into the socket with rough hands, the nails are
tearing through His hands and feet.
He hangs in extremity, for God has forsaken Him. His enemies persecute
and take Him, for there is none to deliver Him. They mock His
nakedness. They point at His agonies. They look and stare upon Him with
ribald jests. They insult His griefs and make puns upon His prayers. He
is now, indeed, a worm and no man, crushed till you can scarcely think
that there is Divinity within. The fever gets hold upon Him. His tongue
is dried up like a potsherd and He cries, "I thirst!" Vinegar is all
they yield Him.
The sun refuses to shine and the thick midnight darkness of that awful
midday, is a fitting emblem of the tenfold midnight of his soul. Out of
that thick horror He cries, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?"
Then, indeed, was He pressed down! Oh, there was never sorrow like unto
His sorrow. All human griefs found a reservoir in His heart, and all
the punishment of human guilt spent itself upon His body and His soul.
Oh, shall sin ever be a trifle to us? Shall I laugh at that which made
Him groan? Shall I toy and dally with that which stabbed Him to the
heart?
Sinner, will you not give up your sins for the sake of Him who quivered
for sin? "Oh," you say, "yes, if I could believe that He suffered for
my sake." Will you trust your soul in His hands this morning? Do you do
so? Then He died for you and took your guilt and carried all your
sorrows, and you may go free, for God is satisfied, and you are
absolved. Christ was burdened that you might be lightened. He was
pressed with your sheaves, that you might find deliverance. I wish I
could talk of my precious Master as He might speak of Himself. Or as
John might speak, who saw Him and bore witness. He could tell in
plaintive tones of the sorrows of the Man of Calvary. But such as I
have, I give you. O that God would give you with it the power, the
Divine Grace, the blessed compulsion to believe on Jesus, to believe on
Jesus NOW!
V. For if not, and here is our last point, God will bear the load for a
little while. But if Christ has not borne it for you and for me, then
THAT SAME LOAD WILL CRUSH US FOREVER AND EVER.
I find that my text is translated by many learned men in a different
way from the version before us–"I will press you as a cart that is
full of sheaves presses your place." That is, just as a heavily loaded
wagon pressed into the poor Eastern roads, and left there deep
furrows–furrows you would hardly think of in a land where we
understand road making so well. Just as deep ridges and ruts were cut
into the Eastern roads by the loaded wagons, so will I crush you, says
God, with the load of your sin.
This is to be your doom, my Hearer, if you are out of Christ. Does it
need me to enlarge upon this terror? I think not. It only needs that
you should make a personal application of the threat! Divide yourselves
now. Divide yourselves, I say! Do you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ?
Then the threat is not yours. But if you believe not, whether you are
standing in yonder aisle, or up there in those far-off galleries, I do
advise you listen to me now, as if you were the only person here–a
Christless soul must be a damned soul–a spirit that believes not in
Christ is condemned already, because it believes not.
How shall you escape if you neglect so great a salvation? Thus says the
Lord unto you, "Consider your ways." By time, by eternity, by life, by
death, by Heaven, by Hell, I plead with you–believe in Him who is able
to save unto the uttermost them that come unto Him. But if you believe
not that Christ is He, you shall die in your sins. After death the
judgment! Oh, the judgment, the thundering trumpet, the multitudes, the
crowds. The books, the Great White Throne, the, "Come, you blessed,"
the "Depart, you cursed"! After judgment–to a soul that is out of
Christ–Hell!
Who among us, who among US shall abide with the devouring flame? Who
among US, who among US shall dwell with the everlasting burnings? I
pray that none of us may. But we must unless we fly to Christ. Oh, I
beseech you, my dear Hearer, fly to Jesus! I may never see your face
again. Your eyes may never look into mine–but I shake my garments of
your blood, if you believe not in Christ this morning. My tears entreat
you, my lips would woo you. There is mercy for you! God has had
patience with you. Let His long-suffering lead you to repentance. He
wills not the death of any, but had rather that they should turn unto
Him and live.
And this turning is simply this–trust Jesus with your soul, and He
shall take your sin and you shall stand accepted in the Beloved. Will
you? No, I know you will not–unless the Spirit of God shall constrain
you. But at the least, if you will not, it shall not be for want of
pleading and entreating. Come, it is mercy's welcome hour. I pray you,
come! Jesus with pierced hands invites you, though you have rejected
Him. You have stood against Him long–He knocks again– His undefeated,
unconquerable love defies your wickedness and will have you.
Sinner, will you have Him or not? "Whosoever will, let him come and
take of the water of life freely." God help you to come, God make you
come, for Christ's sake. Amen.