Just as I am--poor, wretched, blind, O Lamb of God, I come! Just as I am--Thou wilt receive, Because Thy promise I believe: O Lamb of God, I come! Just as I am-Thy love unknown, O Lamb of God, I come! ADDRESS XI. THE GREAT SUPPER. "Then said he unto him, A certain man made a great supper, and bade many and sent his servant at supper time to say to them that were bidden, Come; for all things are now ready. And they all with one consent began to make excuse. The first said unto him, I have bought a piece of ground, and I must needs go and see it: I pray thee have me excused. And another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them: I pray thee have me excused. And another said, I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come. So that servant came, and shewed his lord these things. Then the master of the house being angry said to his servant, Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind. And the servant said, Lord, it is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room. And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. For I say unto you, That none of those men which were bidden shall taste of my supper."LUKE xiv. 16-24. THE chief point in this parable for us is, not so much that those who were bidden rejected the supper, or despised the supper, but that they gave a preference to other things, such as the farm, the new domestic ties, and the five yoke of oxen. There are millions in hell who never in words refused to go to heaven; they did not object to be saved. The people in this parable threw no obloquy on the supper; they simply preferred to mind the things around them, and, as to the L the Lord. Some of them regard the unsaved, the natural man, of whom we do not now speak; the others regard believers. Shall I say it is because of the unbelief of believers that they have so little of true delight in the Lord? Some have but little truth, and that little is dull and torpid in their souls. And, alas! that it should be so, when more truth is put before them they do not see it. They seem to have no receptive faculty. Talk to them of a thousand blessed things concerning our adorable Master and Lord, and of our association with Him, the eternal love and grace of the Father, and they cannot receive them. How can they rejoice and have joy when they do not believe? You understand me; they do believe, and are on the rock as to the blood, but they are, as it were, clinging to the outside of the ark of gopher wood, (which ark was Christ,) with the storm yet, seemingly, pitilessly lashing them; and are not like Noah, who was in perfect security inside the refuge, having the gopher wood (Christ) between him and judgment, and the open window alone between him and the calm azure of heaven beyond! Believers must be ascertainedly in Christ Jesus, or they will not know the joy of the Lord as their strength. Now, I want, beloved friends, at present, to speak from these words, first, a little doctrinally; next, experimentally, and then, practically. For if there be no doctrine, there is no basis for our delight. If no experience, if no delight in the Lord, no practical issue. We shall be able to traverse these things by observing in the text A SPECIAL COMMAND and a SPECIAL PROMISE. The command is, " Delight thyself also in the Lord;" the promise is, "He shall give thee the desires of thine heart." And here I would that the Lord may begin with me; for I cannot tell you how I desire and long, yea long, that God may give me what I want-more truth, more life in my own soul, more of a sense of an unhindered and an ungrieved Spirit dwelling within me, more unction, and power, and utterance in declaring the truth. I myself, beloved, want much. I feel capable of endless, infinite blessings; and I long that He may give you what you want. Our wants are truly many, but here is the royal, the heavenly way of supply, Delight thyself also in the Lord, and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart." 66 How may we define the word delight? "Delight," I suggest, is joy resting in its object, joy in sweet indulgence; it is not so much active, though it is active, as it is passive. The word carries with it its own meaning. If you had a loved child at the antipodes, and longed to see his face again, and the child returned, and you had him in your arms, the emotion you would experience would be that of "delight;" you would be delighting in the object of your love; your joy would be indulging itself in its object. You understand, beloved friends, that if you would delight yourself in the Lord, you must know and love the Lord Himself as the only true basis for your delight. The very name he bears here is instructive, "THE LORD," the incommunicable name. Neither saint nor sinner can rejoice in that blessed name unless they know the Lord, unless they have Him. Do you know the meaning of that name? When Moses said, "I beseech thee shew me thy glory," the Lord said to him, "I will shew thee my glory. I will put thee in a cleft of the rock, and my glory shall pass before thee." And the Lord passed before him, and proclaimed, "The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty." You will observe that when He said, "My glory floods? If with these slighter skirmishings of thy God-hating conscience thou art miserable, what wilt thou do when God will come in on thee like a flood? "If thou hast run with the footmen and they have wearied thee, how wilt thou contend with horses? And if in the land of peace, wherein thou trustest, they wearied thee, what wilt thou do in the swellings of Jordan?" I know not what arguments to use; but if I were in your position, I think I would argue thus God holds me responsible for my existence, my life— an existence which must be spent either in heaven or hell. I have faculties, and God holds me responsible for my faculties; I see I have something within me; an instinct of life, although it be within me as a sort of living death. I am accountable for having such an instinct. It is a something which, unlike the body, cannot die. "I am not ignorant," you say, "but know that I have a soul." Ah, no, God knows you are not ignorant! If this hall had been in perfect darkness, no light in it for centuries, but by-and-by we opened a window, then light would rush in, and with that window open, all the workmen in Europe could not exclude its rays; so is it with you, you have got light! some aperture has been made into your soul, and all the masonry of hell can never fill up that aperture again! Ah, no, no. No, sinner! thou canst not divest thyself of thy knowledge; or of thy conscience; or of thy convictions, although God has said, "My Spirit shall not always strive with man." There is, moreover, the Bible in thine hand; and God's words are familiar to thy lips, His warnings are known to thine ear; but thou knowest, O unconverted man, that if thou wert to die now, where God is thou couldst never come. Think of it! thou hast been born into a world in ruins. Man is a ruin; man held fellow |