SUNDAY HEADING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVIII, Issue 6261, 10 December 1881, Page 3

SUNDAY HEADING.

♦ THE SINNER'S NEED AND THE ; SINNER'S SAVIOUR. BY ARC.-lIHALD O. BROWN. '■ Ml iv, ; like sh»op have gone astray : wo hare tuniud ev.-rv one to his own way ; and th-- r.t.r 1 1..-i!h ; i lairl on Him th-j iniquity of us a'l.'."— Tsai.ili liii . ■: I Lkt us. lirst. have a look at the sheep that . I have yone astray. "All we like sheep have gone astray." This, then, implies that they \ were once in the fold. You cannot very , well go astray unless you have first been in the right place. When God made man He made him in His own image, and when He looked upon our first parents He could pronounce them—"Good." And not more beautiful were they physically and mentally tiian morally. What a wondrous sight that must have been when straight from the Maker's hand our first parents walked the garden without a. sinful thought or evil [ imagination '. Never did lake in mountain J bosom more beautifully reflect the sue by j daylight, and the moon and stars by night, j than did the hearts of our first parents reflect the image of their eternal Father. There was moral loveliness in both. They were in the fold and walked with God. Then came that fatal moment when Adam, the lirst sheep, broke away through the hedge, aud all the world has gone after him ever since. We are not here this evening to inquire how sin first came into the world. It is quite enough for us to know it is here. If I found my house all in a blaze, I think I should be acting the fool's part to stand in the road and say, "Before I telegraph for the engines I wili find out how it caught fire." Why, all of you woul t say, "Do not stop to inquire where the first spark came from. It will be time to search for the secret of the conllagration when the flaming timbers are quenched." It is enough for us to know that iu a fatal moment Adam sinned —broke through the hedge, and his soul uo longer reflected the image of God like that mountain lake I have described, because the rush of the wind of sin lashed the lake into a storm: and where once was a silvery mirror there is nothing now left but inky waves of iniquity and disquiet foaming out their own impurity. My dear friend, Mr. Spurgeon, says that when travelling in Hanover he saw the unfinished palace of the deposed monarch. Ho was shown his state and private carriages and his stables of cream-coloured horses. It was a saddening sight to behold all the emblems of sovereignty and no king—the insignia of royalty and the lronarch for ever exiled. He adds, "How like to human nature, which has so much about it prepared for the service of the King of kings— so much of faculty for heavenly occupation ; but the king has departed and the house is left desolate, and all the furnishing thereof perverted to alien uses. Thought, imagination, judgment, all fit to be yoked to celestial chariots, become the very hacks of the devil, and the body, once a palace, now a haunt of thieves. Alas', alas! Poor manhood." There is one word in this verse which I am afraid some of you will not agree with. It is that "all." "All wo, like sheep, have gone astray/' I dare say there arc some here who have thus far said, " Well, I agree with yon that there is a dreadful amount of sin in the world. I feel, with you. that I something ought to 1 e done to reach our criminal class, and our degraded fellowcreatures.'' Stop! It is not "some;' , it is "All we, like sheep, have gone astray." You look upon the burglar, and the pickpocket, and the drunkard, and the streetwalker, and you say, " Yes poor creatures, they have gone astray." Stay ! my good friend. You, with all your mur.-ility, have gone just as much astray. There is none righteous, you know—not one —and there is not a mini or woman walking Hod's earth tonight who does not need a Saviour, and who, by the very condition in which nature places them, needs not salvation. Just let me road out of this book three verse.-, which arc, to my mini, the must conclusive on this subject If you turn to the .'ird of Romans, and the 10th verso, you will find these words : "There is none righteous, no, not one. There is none that understandeth; there is none that seokcth after God. They are :ill gone out of tin. way : they are together become unprofitable. There is none that docth i;ood, no, not one." These words, "no, not one," ought to be the death-knell to every selfrighteous thought that any of us may have entertained when we came hero. There is not a man who will walk along Clicapsidc to-uiori'osv who has not a fallen nature —not oue of the stream which will pour over London Bridge who has not gone astray. "All we, like sheep." So as to bring "it homo to you, look along these ranks downstairs, and in the galleries. There is not .1 man, woman, or child in this place who has not gone astray and requires a Saviour. 11. Note next that each sheep walks its own path. "Wo have turned every one to lii.s own way." You sec that all have gone away from the fold, and then each has taken his own way. It is not necessary because a flock goes astray for every sheep to walk along the same path. There is an almost infinite variety in sinning. We are apt to make a great mistake in estimating a man's sinfulness. We say of one, "Oh, he is a great sinner, but not nearly so bail as so-aud-so.'' I will tell you why. It is only because he happens to have a different temperament. It is only a different taste in sinning, not a less taste for sinning. Some go along a path of licentiousness, and their life is simply a scandal and a shame—something that calls the burning blush to the sister's cheek, and brings the grey hairs of the father with sorrow to the grave—a life that ends in a hospital amid scenes which no tungue can describe. He has taken his own way. There is another who says, "Oh, that is horrible, horrible ! I have not the slightest sympathy with such." No, I will tell you what you are doing. You are only walking your own path. You arc going another way, and it is called the money-making road. With how many it is £ s d—money, money, money, from morning till night. The man looks at money, until his very countenance seems to become yellow with gazing on the gold ; and he handles it till his fingers seem to have a convulsive clutch I about them. Now, that man is just as far ' oil'from God as the one who lives the openly licentious life. The one has gone to his own way, and the other has done the same. Now, it may bo that there are some here who are walking the gamester's path. It is a short one, with frequently a tragic end. The man begins, first of all as a lad, witli 11 | little gambling amongst the boys in the i streets for halt-pence, aud then it goes on to I the card tricks, and then, too often, alas, it cuds with a pistol shot at Baden Baden, or some other gambling hell. Now there steps forward one who says, "Quite right, Mr. Preacher, you cannot denounce those things too strongly ; I abhor ! them all." Do you? Then listen as 1 tell I you what you are doing. You are only j walking another road called the moralist's I path. You rub your hands with all the selfconceit of a Pharisee as you say, "I thank God that lam not as other men arc. lam so pleased I am not like that profligate you described ; I do not know anything about his experience. I am so glad, too, that I know nothing about the gambling spirit. I go to church and chapel as regularly as possible—never think of going to bed without saying a prayer." Stop ! my friend. And you arc trusting to that? I tell jou you arc just as much astray as those who have gone into the most open and shameful sin. You have simply turned to your own way. Whilst infidelity has slain her hundreds, and gambling her thousands, and licentiousness her tens of thousands, ;i Christies* morality has slain her hundreds of thousands. If you put it to me plainly, " Who do you think is the most likely to be converted in this tabernacle—the street-walker, the profane man, or the moralist, who has heard sermons all his life ?"' 1 tell you I have far more hope of the former two than of the last. I have more expectation concerning that out-and-out sinner (who has had the black flag flying at the masthead for years) than 1 have of the one who says of our text, "Yes, that is very true of great sinners, and those whose lives are a shame and disgrace." My dear friend, if you are trusting to your own morality for salvation, you might just as well trust to your sins. It is only another path away from God. Now, this brings us to our third and last point. What is liod's way of Salvation': Oil, I do trust that there are some of you already saying, " Well, I think all this is true of me. Like a sheep I have gone astray. 1 am very different from what I was as a lad. 1 know that what I am now my mother never thought I should lie." Now, let me ask you to listen, as for your life. Here is the blessed answer. "And the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all." "Then how much have the sheep to do in the way of saving themselves ?" Nothing ! nothing ! It is not, "All we, like sheep, have gone astray, aud all we, like sheep, must strug-lc

till we get back again." No. It is, "All we, like sheep, have gone astray." We can do that bit of the business ourselves : but when -we arc to be brought back to God, the sheep are powerless to do anything at all in the matter. You see there is another person introduced. "And the Lord hith laid on Him the iniquity of us all." Who i.- the "Him?" Wh'.-, the one described in th.previous ver.-c ■ —a de-pise 1 one -a ri-j'.-'-t'.". one—a man of sorrows and grief's acquaint..ance. Who is the '•Him:" Oh, ring it '■>ut: It is the scorned. Who is the " Him ?" Oh, let the angels echo it '. It is an incarnate God, who stoopr-d in mercy, and became clothed in a body like ourselves, that He might be able to suffer ; and on Him has the Lord made the iniquity of all these stray sheep to meet. Iu the marginal reference you sec it is rendered, "The Lord hath made the iniquity of us all to meet on Him." Have you ever seen mountain torlvnts ? If so, you can better understand the illustration. L T p there, there is a stream —a fountain—but as it comes down the mountain side it separates. Here is a channel, there another. Here it leaps over boulder stones—here it rushes between rugged craps, vonder it falls into a yawnin" chasm, while "another stream runs silently between beds of mountain moss. But all the streams are making for one reservoir. They are all pouring into that deep, swollen lake at the mountain's base. "All we, like sheep, have gone astray ; and the Lord hath made the iniquity of us all to meet on Him." .lust as all the mountain streams, though by diif'crent routes, made their way to the lake, so all the sins of these strayed sheep were made to meet in the deep lake of Christ's sorrowful heart. "He hath made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." Bear in mind that God can never excuse siu—can never wink at it. Every sin that has ever been committed must receive its just punishment. I think any of you here will sec that if an infinitely holy and just God were to wink at siu, it would be an outrage on His own nature. Sin must be judged and condemned. Yea, sin must be executed—where? Either in the sinner's person or in the sinner's substitute. Now, where can the substitute be found ? Christ Himself gives the answer. Saved from going down to the pit, for " I have found a ransom." Where sin is—and let me ask your careful attention, for I have learnt by experience that if people are to enter into peace they must have a clear view of the Gospel—there the punishment must come. Now, when Christ on that tree held up for judgment all the sius of those sheep which had gone astray, the judgment came, the penalty was inflicted. If I were to ask you working-men this evening what is the penalty for sin, I believe I should have an answer directly from every one in this building, "Death." You are right: it is death. And, oh, matchless love, "Christ died for the ungodly." Oh, if I could only make you understand this dying love of Christ, I know it would melt yon. There have been some instances of earthly love, but none like it. In the time of the French Revolution a young man was condemned to the guillotine. There were many iii Paris who loved him during that awful crisis, but there was one who loved him more than all the rest together. Do you say, "Who?" and "How can you tell?" I answer, "His father," and 1 know it for this reason. He had identically the same name as his son, and when the list of those to be executed by the guillotine was read, and the son's name was called, he answered to it and stepped into the gloomy tumbrel, was rattled over the stones (if Paris, and had his head severed from his body. He answered to his son's name, and bo died for his son's sake. Ob, can you not run the parallel, my friends ? There is one who loved you better than His own life. lie answered for your sins. He bore the punishment, and died in your room and st-ad, that you, the guilty, might go free. What:, then, is required "on 'the "sinner's part? Nothing! simply nothing but to trust the atoiiiu,' sacrifice of Christ. If any man or woman in this tabernacle this evening, as a sinner, rests on the finished work of Christ for salvation, he shall leave this place as much saved as the glorified m\v before the throne. " What, am I not to feel something:" you say. No, nothing save that; you are a sinner. It is, accept Christ's finished work, and trust Him solely. I doubt not that there is many a poor sailor lighting for his life upon the deep this fearful night. May God help him ! And, like enough, there is some poor sailor clutching a broken mast—now on the top of the billow, now down in the green trough, yet still hanging on -with despairing clutch. Oh, sinner, I ofi'er you no mere broken mast to save you from being swallowed up in the deep of sin's punishment. Christ Himself holds out Mis hand. Take it; grasp it. Sink or swim, win or lose, let Christ be the object of your trust and you shall be saved. Moll will not dare to touch the man who lias laid hold af Christ. There was an incident narrated in the newspapers some few years ago that just illustrates this ; and wbh it I will conclude, for I do not wish to weary you. There was one condemned in a Spanish court to be shot. The man was an American citizen, but an Englishman by birth. The Consuls of the two nations did all they could to get the sentence altered, but in vain. Now, how do you think they saved him ? At the last moment these two Con suls went with the flags of their respective nations and wrappo I the condemned man round with the Union Jack and Sara and Stripes, savin;.'. "Now fire at him if you dare, for if you do. it will be an insult to both nations." Why, that man was safer than if he had been encased in steel. Now, how does God save the poor sinner ? Jesus Christ comes to him and wraps him round with the banner of His atoning sacrifice and perfect righteousness, and says to hell, "Now, touch him if you dare." Jesus, Thy robe of righteousness, My beauty i«, my glorious dross. Yes, dear friends, trust Christ and Tie will wrap you about in the garments of His salvation and none shall dare to harm you. "All we, like sheep, have gone astray." I think I hoar some of you say, "That is true." "Wo have turned everyone to his own way." You say, "That is true." "And the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all " Now, will you add, " And that is true, blessed be His name, and I will i trust Hill." God help yon, dear friends ! Even now, .is we speak, may the Lord God, the Holy Ghost, help some of you, just as you arc, without trying to make yourself better—as poor sheep which have gone astray and never can get back—as those who have turned to their own ways, and never can reclaim themselves —to trust uhrist's finished j work. Trust and be saved ; look and live. . The Lord save you, for His name's sake. J Amen.