And Judas Iscariot: Together with other evangelistic addressesChapman, J. Wilbur (John Wilbur)
Religion
And Judas Iscariot: Together with other evangelistic addresses
Chapman, J. Wilbur (John Wilbur)
Evangelistic sermons; Presbyterian Church -- Sermons; Sermons, American
For the truth of this statement one needs only to study his Bible and
he will find written in almost every book of Old Testament and New a
similar expression. At the same time in the study of God's word it
will be revealed to him that God has a great plan which he is carefully
working out. We must be familiar with the beginning and the unfolding
of this plan and with the conclusion he reached. When after the
rebellion of his people and their unwillingness to obey his precepts we
find him saying, "And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in
the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was
only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that he had made man
on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the Lord said, I
will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both
man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for
it repenteth me that I have made them."
Then turning to the New Testament Scriptures we find almost a similar
expression when Jesus reaches the climax of his compassionate and
gracious ministry with the children of Israel. "He came unto his own
and his own received him not"; and in the twenty-third chapter of
Matthew and the thirty-seventh to the thirty-ninth verse, inclusive, we
hear him saying, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the
prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I
have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her
chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left
unto you desolate. For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth,
till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord."
From that day on his special ministry was to the Gentiles, and he has
been seeking in every possible way to bring us to an appreciation of
what it means to know him and to be filled with all his fullness. We
have but to stop for a moment and consider to realize that by many his
overtures have been declined, his Spirit grieved and his Son rejected.
Men have lived as if they had no responsibility towards him at all and
in many instances they have put him entirely out of their
consideration. If we compare present day indifference and sin with the
condition of things at the time of the flood, and then again compare
them with the position of Israel when Jesus turned away from them with
tears, it would seem almost as if the world of the present day had made
progress both in the matter of indifference and rejection; and
therefore it is not strange that such an Old Testament text as this
would be applicable to people living about us. It is a solemn text.
"_My Spirit shall not always strive with men_." It is along the line
of those solemn words of Dr. Alexander:
"There is a time, we know not when;
A place, we know not where,
That seals the destiny of man
For glory or despair."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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