ALL MEN INVITED TO APPLY JESUS CHRIST
1. The memory of sin long since committed is refreshed and revived as if it had been but yesterday. There are fresh recognitions of sin long since
forgotten. What was done in our youth is brought back again, and by a new impression of fear and horror set home upon the trembling conscience.
“Thou writest bitter things against me, and makest me to possess the iniquities of my youth.” <181326>
Job 13:26.
Conscience can call back the days that are past, and draw up a new charge upon the score of old sins. <014221>
Genesis 42:21. All that ever we did is recorded and entered into the book of conscience, and now is the time to open that book when the Lord will convince and awaken sinners. We read in <181417>
Job 14:17, of sealing up iniquities in a bag, which is an allusion to the clerk of the assizes, that takes all the indictments made against persons at the assizes, and seals them up in a bag in order to a trial. This is the first office and work of conscience; upon which depend,
2. Its accusations. These accusations of conscience are terrible, who can stand before them? They are full, they are clear, and all of them referring to the approaching judgment of the great and terrible God. Conscience dives into all sin, secret as well as open, and into all the circumstances and aggravations of sin, as being committed against light, against mercy, against the strivings, warnings, and regrets of conscience; so that we may say of the efficacy of conscience as it is said, <191906>
Psalm 19:6, of the influence of the sun, nothing is hid from the heat and power thereof. “Come,” saith the woman of Samaria, “see a man which told me all things that ever I did.”
<430429>
John 4:29. Christ convinced her but of one sin by his discourse, but conscience by that one brought in and charged all the rest upon her. And as the accusations of conscience are full, so they are clear and undeniable. A man becomes self-convinced, and there remains no shift, excuse, or plea to defend himself. A thousand witnesses cannot prove any point more clearly than one testimony of conscience. The man “was speechless,” <402212>
Matthew 22:12, a mute, muzzled, as the word signifies, by the clear testimony of his own conscience. These accusations are the second work of conscience, and they make way for,
3. The sentence and condemnation of conscience. And truly this is an insupportable burden. The condemnation of conscience is nothing else but its application of the condemning sentence of the law to a man’s person.
The law curseth every one that transgresseth it. <480310>
Galatians 3:10.
Conscience applies this curse to the guilty sinner. It sentences the sinner in
God’s name and authority, from which there is no appeal. The voice of conscience is the voice of God, and what it pronounces in God’s name and authority he will confirm and ratify. “If our heart,” our conscience,
“condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.” <620320>
1 John 3:20. This is that torment which no man can endure. See the effects of it in Cain, in Judas, and in Spira; it is a real foretaste of hell-torments.
This is that worm that never dies. <410944>
Mark 9:44. As a worm in the body is bred of the corruption there, so the accusations and condemnations of conscience are bred in the soul by the corruption and guilt that are there.
As the worm in the body preys and bites upon the tender, sensible, inward parts, so does conscience touch the very quick. This third effect or work to sentence and condemn makes way for conscience,
4. To upbraid and reproach the sinner under his misery; and this makes a man a very terror to himself. To be pitied in misery is some relief, but to be upbraided and reproached doubles our affliction. You know it was one of the aggravations of Christ’s sufferings to be reproached by the tongues of his enemies while he hung in torments upon the cursed tree; but all the scoffs and reproaches, the bitter jeers and sarcasms in the world are nothing to those of a man’s own conscience, which will cut to the very bone: Oh, when a man’s conscience shall say to him in the day of trouble, as Reuben to his afflicted brethren,
“Spake I not unto you, saying, Do not sin against the child; and ye would not hear? Therefore, behold, also his blood is required.”
<014222>
Genesis 42:22.
So conscience, “Did I not warn you, threaten you, persuade you in time against these evils? But you would not hearken to me; therefore, behold, now you must suffer to all eternity for it. The wrath of God is kindled against thy soul for it; this is the fruit of thy own willful madness and obstinacy. Now thou shalt know the price of sinning against God, against light and conscience.” O this is terrible! Every bite of conscience makes a poor soul startle and cry in terror, O the worm; O the bitter foretaste of hell! A wounded spirit who can bear?
This is a fourth wound of conscience, and it makes way for a fifth; for here it is as in the pouring out of the vials, and the sounding of those woe- trumpets in the Revelation — one woe is past, and another cometh. After
all these deadly blows of conscience upon the very heart of a sinner, comes another as dreadful as any that is yet named:
5. The fearful expectation of wrath to come which it begets in the soul of a guilty sinner. Of this you read, <581027>
Hebrews 10:27: “A fearful looking for of judgment, and fiery indignation.” And this makes the stoutest sinner faint and sink under the burden of sin; for the tongue of man cannot declare what it is to lie down and rise with those fearful expectations. The case of such sinners is somewhat like that described in <052865>
Deuteronomy 28:65-67:
“The Lord shall give thee a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind and thy life shall hang in doubt before thee; and thou shalt fear day and night, and shalt have none assurance of thy life. In the morning thou shalt say, Would God it were even! and at even thou shalt say, Would God it were morning! for the fear of thy heart wherewith thou shalt fear, and for the sight of thine eyes which thou shalt see.”
Only in this it differs: in this scripture you have the terror of those described whose temporal life hangs in doubtful suspense, but in the persons I am speaking of it is a trembling under the apprehensions and expectations of the vengeance of eternal fire.
Believe it, friends, words cannot express what those poor creatures feel that lie down and rise up under these fears and alarms of conscience. Lord, what will become of me? I am free among the dead, yea, among the
damned. I hang by the frail thread of a momentary life, which will and must break shortly, and may break the next moment, over the everlasting burnings: no pleasant bread is to be eaten in these days, but what is like the bread of condemned men.
Thus you see what the burden of sin is when God makes it bear upon the consciences of men; no burden of affliction is like it; losses of dearest relations, sorrows for an only son, are not so pungent and penetrating as these.
No creature enjoyments are pleasant under these inward troubles. In other troubles they may bring relief, but here they are nothing; the wound is too deep to be healed by any thing but the blood of Jesus Christ; conscience requires as much to satisfy it, as God requires to satisfy him. “When God
is at peace with thee,” saith conscience, “then will I be at peace with thee;
but till then expect no rest nor peace from me. Pleasures and diversions shall never stop my mouth; go where thou wilt, I will follow thee like thy shadow; be thy portion in the world sweet as it may, I will drop gall and wormwood into thy cup, that thou shalt taste no sweetness in any thing till thou hast got thy pardon.” These inward troubles for sin alienate the mind from all former pleasures and delights; there is no more taste or savor in them than in the white of an egg. Music is out of tune; all instruments jar and groan. Ornaments have no beauty: what heart hath a poor creature to deck that body in which dwells such a miserable soul; to feed and pamper the body that has been the soul’s inducement to and instrument in sin, and must be its companion in everlasting misery?
These inward troubles for sin awaken a dread of death beyond what the soul ever saw in it before. Now it looks like the king of terrors indeed. You read of some that through fear of death are all their lifetime subject to bondage. <580215>
Hebrews 2:15. O what a lively comment is a soul in this case able to make upon such a text. They would not fear the pale horse, nor him that sits on him, though his name be Death, if it were not for what follows him, <660608>
Revelation 6:8; but when they consider that hell follows, they tremble at the very name or thoughts of death.
Such is the nature of these inward troubles of spirit, that they swallow up the sense of all outward troubles. Alas, these are all lost in the deeps of soul-sorrows, as the little rivulets are in the vast sea. A small matter
formerly would discompose a man; now ten thousand outward troubles are light, for saith he, “Why doth a living man complain?” Am I yet on this side of eternal burnings? O let me not complain then, whatever my
condition be. Have I losses in the world, or pains in my body? Alas, these are not to be named with the loss of God, and the feeling of his wrath and indignation for evermore.” Thus you see what inward troubles for sin are.
II.
But HOW ARE SOULS SUPPORTED UNDER SUCH TROUBLES? How is it that all who feel them do not sink under them? The answer is,1. Though this be a very sad time with the soul — much like that of Adam