READER, do you know what it is to be oppressed, as with a heavy burden? Your circumstances are all right, outwardly things go on fairly smoothly. Little ups and downs, nothing more, yet what is it? Why that restless feeling? You may take your own way, but it will not bring what you want.
Let me tell you about one in a similar state of soul. She had been listening to the preaching of God’s Word, and her soul had been awakened to the fact that God was not in all her thoughts; that all her life she had been doing her own will, and going her own way, and had proved that “the way of transgressors is hard.”
The next day, calling at her house with a little book, she said, “Oh do come in, I am all alone.” On inquiring, “Are you in any trouble?” the answer came a little unexpectedly, for she was a complete stranger. “It is my soul I am troubled about; my sins are like a heavy burden weighing me down; and I feel as if I have been always going the wrong way.”
Silently my heart spoke, “Lord, give her a message Thyself”; for I knew the Good Shepherd was seeking His straying sheep. Together we turned to Isa. 53, and read vs. 6. “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” She read it twice aloud; and then simply said, “That’s me! that’s me! I have gone astray!”
We spoke of where that way (her own way) would lead her, that is to death, and that after death comes the judgment; and then (as the tears of repentance fell fast) of the One Who had gone into death, and borne the judgment due to us, that it might never reach us. Then pointing to the latter half of the verse, showed that the little word all occurred twice in the same verse, and that the only way to escape from the judgment due to the first “all” is to belong to the second “all.” We also read the previous verse: “He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and by His stripes we are healed.”
Reader, I pray that the light may shine into your heart as it did into that troubled woman’s; first of all showing that, “the soul that sinneth” must die, for God “will by no means clear the guilty,” and that this is true of every person not washed in the precious blood of Christ; but those who are under the shelter of that blood will never be reached by judgment.
“And could’st Thou be delighted
With creatures such as we;
Who, when we saw Thee slighted,
And nailed Thee to the tree?
Unfathomable wonder,
And mystery Divine,
The voice that speaks in thunder,
Says, ‘Sinner, I am thine.’”