“HERE are those ranter-folk again, and setting up a tent now.”
The speaker was regarding from her house, with no very favorable eye, the operations of two young fellows in a neighboring field, to one of whom she was not altogether a stranger, for he had been previously preaching in the kitchen of a house close by, and she had been invited to attend. This on one occasion she had done, but only on the condition that she might sit unobserved in the back kitchen; with the result that she had gone away saying, “That young man talks as if we were all sinners but himself.” And, no doubt, it is galling for a thoroughly respectable, middle-aged woman, against whom the neighbors have not a word to say, but rather the reverse, to be informed, in no measured terms, that she is a sinner, and a lost sinner, and that if she is to be saved, it must be together with the vilest, and on the ground of simple grace alone. And now the very man who had presented to her, probably for the first time in her life, in plain unvarnished language, these unpalatable truths, was helping another to erect a tent for gospel preaching within a stone’s throw of her own door!
However, hostile criticism notwithstanding, the tent was in due course erected, and the villagers flocked in to see what was going on, and after a few meetings had been held, prompted, perchance, by idle curiosity, but directed nevertheless by God Himself, our critic one evening entered the tent and took a seat, and the preaching began. Not long had she listened before idle curiosity was exchanged for attention, and attention for anxiety, and night after night found her in her place hanging on the preacher’s words. Meanwhile, her presence and anxious face were not lost upon the one who preached, and after the last of one of the week-night services, he called in to see the friend who had lent her kitchen for the previous preaching’s, and said, “Do you know Miss K. is drinking in every word; pray for her. I believe that on Sunday she’ll be saved.”
That Sunday night the portion dwelt upon was the sixteenth chapter of Leviticus, bringing before the soul the claims of a holy God, and access to Him, shut out to the sinner by his sins; but God in grace providing by the blood of the goat, upon which Jehovah’s lot fell, a means whereby He, while maintaining His righteousness, can at the same time come out in love, and be just Himself and the Justifier of them that believe in Jesus.
“See, sprinkled with the blood,
The mercy-seat above;
For justice had withstood
The purposes of love;
But justice now withstands no more,
And mercy yields her boundless store.”
Was God light? His own word declares it of Himself. How could He then have to do with that which was moral darkness, pitch darkness — the sinner in his sins — save to judge him? Was He righteous? In truth He was. Could He then suffer those in His presence upon whom He had pronounced the solemn judgment, “None righteous; no, not one”? Nay; that were to belie His words who says that He is of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look on iniquity. Terrible hour for him or her who has to stand, clad in their own righteousness, bore Him who has declared such to be but filthy rags! Awful doom to be pronounced by Him who is the righteous Judge. But is God only light? No, He Himself says that He is also love. Were He light alone, He would demand that the sinner should be doomed to everlasting banishment in hell. Were He love alone, so to save a sinful world, His holiness and righteousness would be forever gone. How then can He act; for His holiness will not allow Him to pass over sin, and His love will not allow Him to plunge the sinner ruthlessly into hell? The answer to this mighty riddle is the cross; for there at once by the blood of Christ, God’s righteous claims as to sin are fully met, and all His heart of love flows forth towards a guilty world.
And so the preacher from the type turned to the great Antitype, and told how the blood of Christ was sprinkled upon the mercy-seat, to meet the eye of God, so that He, as it were, was stretching across the blood-stained seat a hand to the vilest sinner present, and in mercy asking him or her to be reconciled.
And one there was that Sunday night who took that place; none other than our good religious friend, the scorner of the “ranter-folk.” With women of the city who were sinners, with dying thieves, she gladly took her place. Never had she been in such low company before; but, meeting with them in the tent at G— that night, she also met with Him who “receiveth sinners and eateth with them,” who had “not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”
How few there are who thus learn God. Most learn the other aspect of the cross of Christ, brought out in the type of the Scapegoat, which bears into an uninhabited land the sins confessed upon its head. They are content to find that themselves are cleared, and little think of God. Hence they are assailed by doubts and fears; now happy, now dejected, and so are little able to testify to others of a full and free salvation. But God does not so act. He first sets forth His own righteousness, and has the whole question raised and settled by Christ upon the cross, and then He shows us how we can be saved. And in the consciousness of this blessed truth alone is lasting, settled peace to be found; for God declares Himself to be “a just God and a Saviour,” a just God first. (Isa. 45:2121Tell ye, and bring them near; yea, let them take counsel together: who hath declared this from ancient time? who hath told it from that time? have not I the Lord? and there is no God else beside me; a just God and a Saviour; there is none beside me. (Isaiah 45:21).)
Next day our friend was in the kitchen, which she once despised, and speaking of the hand stretched out to the filthiest sinner there, said brokenly, with tears, “I took it, and could scarcely keep my seat, I so longed to get up and tell them all.”
Fellow sinner, vile sinner it may be; self-satisfied, good, religious sinner it may be, the hand of God is still stretched forth to you in love, beseeching you, “be reconciled to God. For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.”