I have been reading the a book by Martyn Lloyd Jones, entitled "The Cross" and these couple paragraphs just struck me as wonderful truths, so I had to write them to you guys. It is of great encouragement.
So first off lets see who, according to Jones, and I believe it in accordance with the scriptures, who is the invitation of the Gospel not for. Here is what he says;
"If you come to Him standing erect upon your feet, proud of your knowledge and your learning, glorying in the fact that you are a twentieth century man, and that you are good and moral, and an idealist who wants to put an end to war. If you think that you can uplift the human race by your own efforts-if you come like that, this gospel has no invitation for you, the blood of the sprinkling will condemn you. It will show you to yourself for what you areas we have already seen. It will show you that all your righteousness is but filthy rags, it will humble you it will condemn you, it will abase you to the ground, it will cast you to the dust. There will be no invitation to you."
Alright, we have seen to whom the invitation of the Gospel is not to, lets take a look at to whom it is inviting;
"The invitation is to such. Weary, worn. Have you been engaged in this moral struggle? Do you feel that you are a failure, that the whole thing is hopeless? Do you despise yourself, kick yourself metaphorically, and feel you are no good? Weary, forlorn, tired, and on top of it all, sad and miserable? Nothing can comfort you. The pleasures of the world mock you. They do not give you anything. Life has disappointed you, and you are sad and miserable and unhappy, and on top of it all you have a sense of guilt within you. Your conscience nags at you, condemns raises up your past and puts it before you, and you know that you are unworthy, you know that you are a failure, you know there is no excuse, you are guilty. But still worse, you know that you are unclean, you know that your heart is unclean. For it is out of the heart that come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications and all the rest. The heart is the trouble, and you have come to see that you are rotten, that in you there is no good thing. Oh wretched man, you say, who shall deliver me? Here you are, not only guilty, but you are unclean, you are vile, you are foul. 'Foul, I to the fountain fly', says another hymn. The writer has seen it, he has felt it he has known it.
And then on top of all of this, you are filled with a sense of fear. You are afraid of life, you are afraid of yourself and your own weakness, you are afraid of tomorrow. You are afraid of death, you know it is coming and you can do nothing about it, but you are afraid of it. Oh, what lies beyond it? Thoughts come to you of that , ' unknown bourne from which no traveler returns'. Death is coming, and there you are, you can do nothing, and you feel guilty and you are full of fear of God, the judgement, and hell, and terror and alarms possess you. You feel utterly hopeless and completely helpless. You have tried so often, only to fail. You have made you resolutions but you have never kept them, you have had good and noble ideas, but you have never put them into practice. You have tried, you have fasted, you have sweated, you have prayed, you have read, you have done everything, but the more you do, the more vile you see yourself, and the more hopeless. You say to yourself, I am no good, I am damned, I am lost, I am unworthy, I am a mass of pollution. 'Oh, wretched man that I am!' 'In me there dwelleth no good thing'
And this is the amazing thing about the cross. It comes to such a person, and it is to such a person above all others that it brings its gracious and its glorious invitation."
AMAZING. I love it, such a huge comfort.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
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