‘RUBBING IT OUT BIT BY BIT’
It was a lovely and secluded spot, the village of B-- ; and as I walked round its churchyard, one bright summer day, it seemed too lovely for death to be there. Nevertheless, on every hand there were the unmistakable signs of it - freshly inscribed tombstones, as well as those of two or three centuries, which time had well-nigh effaced, making it extremely difficult to decipher the long-forgotten name. How brief is man’s day! His history summed up by the wise man, ‘Come’, ‘Gone’, ‘Forgotten’, soon forgotten by man, and yet not forgotten by God, each name, each history, and all to come up again in the hour that is nearing apace. “Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice”, John 5: 28. How blessed to have heard His word, His voice, in the hour that “now is”. To such it will be a resurrection of life. To those who have never heard His voice in that hour, it will be a resurrection of judgment.
Musing thus, I stood under the shade of a tall chestnut tree, whose branches reached out over the churchyard gate, and wellnigh across the road. Under the tree by the roadside was a huge stone. On it I observed sitting an old man, whose grey locks betokened many summers and winters. He seemed to be enjoying the rest and shade; and as there was room for another, I went and sat with him.
I said, ‘Father, you seem to be getting on in years’.
‘Yes, sir, I am well-nigh eighty-two’.
‘I suppose you have spent most of your time in this village?’
‘I was born, brought up, and have lived most of my life here. I don’t think I have been a fortnight out of it’.
I said, ‘You have seen many changes in your lifetime. Most of the people you knew in youthful days are gone’.
‘Ah, yes!’ he said, shaking his head and looking towards the churchyard gate.
I said, ‘They will soon be taking you in there’.
‘Yes, I can’t expect to be here much longer’.
‘Have you any hope beyond?’ I said.
He replied, ‘I think I have’.
‘What about your sins? They must be got rid of. It is written “there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie”, Rev 21: 27’.
He replied, ‘I am getting on, sir, - saying my prayers, reading my Bible, I think I am getting on, sir, rubbing them out bit by bit’.
‘Oh’, I said. ‘You will never get rid of your sins that way! All your prayer saying, your Scripture reading, would never blot out a single sin-stain. No, father (pointing up), there is One blessed Man, the Son of God, who, when He had made by Himself purification of sins, sat down on the right hand of God, of whom God declares in His word, that His blood, and His blood alone, can cleanse sins; and you, as you sit here, looking up and trusting Him, may know, on the authority of God’s word, at this very moment, that all your sins are gone, and gone for ever’.
‘It is not thy tears of repentance or prayers.
But the blood that atones for the soul.’
Reader, hast thou known its cleansing virtue? It cleanseth now; it cleanseth from all sin. What an awful delusion, ‘Rubbing them out bit by bit’. And yet how many there are who, if not using the simple language of this countryman, are seeking some other way than God's way of cleansing.
Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins.
“The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin”,
1 John 1: 7
WHY DO PEOPLE DIE?
You will have to die some day, but why? It is not natural to die, it is natural to sleep. You do not go upstairs to die in the same way that you go upstairs to sleep. You have stood by your dying friends, perhaps, and you have seen that it is not natural to die.
DEATH COMES THROUGH SIN.
“The wages of sin is death”, Rom 6: 23. The reason people die is because they are not fit to live here. You know not but that you may die to-night. Perhaps you hope to go to heaven when you die. I am not speaking of Christians now (as a matter of fact some Christians will not die at all), I am speaking to those who are unconverted. You hope to go to heaven, yet you die because you are not fit for earth! Hope to get to heaven, do you? What a strange thing! How can you think of going to heaven to live with God, when you are not fit to live on earth with men? I am not shutting the door of heaven against you, but I want you to see how matters really stand with you. It is a solemn subject. God may stop the beating of your heart to-night. If you leave this world as not fit to live here, do you think you are going to live with God on the same footing - your own merit? Certainly not.
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From ‘Salvation of God’, 1888