01.04f Hell cont'd
Hell cont’d
Application
1. Here is a measuring rod- O that men would apply it! Apply it to your own time in this world, and you will find your time to be very short. A prospect of much time to come, proves the ruin of many souls. Men will be reckoning their time by ’years’, like that rich man (Luke 12:19-20), when, it may be, there are not many ’hours’ of it to run. But reckon as you will, laying your time to the measuring reed of eternity, you will see your age is as nothing. What a small and inconsiderable point is sixty, eighty, or a hundred years, in respect of eternity! Compared with eternity, there is a greater disproportion than between a hair’s breadth and the circumference of the whole earth.
Why do we then sleep in such a short day, while we are in danger of losing rest through the long night of eternity?
Apply it to your endeavors for salvation, and they will be found very scanty. When men are pressed to diligence in their salvation work, they are ready to say, ’To what purpose is this waste?’
Alas! if it were to be judged by our diligence, what end it is that we have in view; as to the most part of us, no man could thereby conjecture that we have eternity in view. If we duly considered eternity, we could not but conclude, that, to leave no appointed means of God untried until we get our salvation secured- to refuse rest or comfort in anything, until we are sheltered under the wings of the Mediator- to pursue our great interest with the utmost vigor to cut off lusts dear as right hands and right eyes- to set our faces resolutely against all difficulties- and fight our way through all opposition made by the devil, the world, and the flesh. These are, all of them together, little enough for eternity.
2. Here is a balance of the sanctuary, by which we may understand the lightness of what is falsely thought weighty; and the weight of some things, by many reckoned to be very light.
Some things seem very weighty, which, weighed in this balance, will be found very light–
(a) Weigh the world, and all that is in it, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, and the whole will be found light in the balance of eternity.
Weigh herein all worldly profits, gains, and advantages; and you will quickly see, that a thousand worlds will not compensate for an eternity of woe! ’For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’ (Matthew 16:26). Weigh the pleasures of sin, which are but for a season, with the fire that is everlasting, and you show yourself to be fools and madmen, to run the hazard of losing the one for the other.
(b) Weigh your afflictions in this balance, and you will find the heaviest of them very light, in respect of the weight of eternal anguish. Impatience under affliction, especially when worldly troubles so embitter men’s spirits that they cannot relish the glad tidings of the Gospel, speaks great regardlessness of eternity. As a small and inconsiderable loss will be very little at heart with him who sees himself in danger of losing his whole estate; so troubles in the world will appear but light to him who has a lively view of eternity. Such a one will stoop and take up his cross, whatever it be, thinking it enough to escape eternal wrath.
(c) Weigh the most difficult and uneasy duties of religion here, and you will no more reckon the yoke of Christ insupportable.
Repentance and bitter mourning for sin, on earth, are very light in comparison of eternal weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth in hell! To wrestle with God in prayer, weeping and making supplication for the blessing in time, is far easier than to lie under the curse through all eternity! Mortification of the most beloved lust is a light thing in comparison with the second death in hell!
(d) Weigh your convictions in this balance. O how heavy do those lie upon many until they get them shaken off! They are not disposed to continue with them, but strive to get clear of them as of a mighty burden. But the worm of a bad conscience will neither die nor sleep in hell, though we may now lull it asleep for a time. And certainly it is easier to entertain the sharpest convictions in this life, so that they lead us to Christ, than to have them fixed forever in the conscience, and to be in hell totally and finally separated from Him.
But, on the other hand, weigh sin in this balance, and, though now it seems but a light thing to you, you will find it a weight sufficient to turn up an eternal weight of wrath upon you.
Even idle words, vain thoughts, and unprofitable actions, weighed in this balance, and considered as following the sinner into eternity, will each of them be heavier than the sand of the sea! Time idly spent will make a weary eternity!
Now is your seedtime; thoughts, words, and actions, are the seed sown, eternity is the harvest. Though the seed now lies under the clod, disregarded by most men, even the least grain shall spring up at length; and the fruit will be according to the seed (Galatians 6:8), ’For he that sows to his flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption, (that is, destruction), but he that sows to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.’
Weigh in this balance your time and opportunities of grace and salvation, and you will find them very weighty. Precious time and seasons of grace, Sabbaths, communions, prayers, sermons, and the like, are by many, now-a-days made light of; but the day is coming when one of these will be reckoned more valuable than a thousand worlds by those who now have the least value for them! When they are gone forever, and the loss cannot be retrieved, those will see the worth of them who will not now see it.
3. Be warned and stirred up to flee from the wrath to come! Mind eternity, and closely ply the work of your salvation. What are you doing, while you are not so doing? Is heaven a fable, or hell a false alarm? Must we live eternally, and shall we be at no more pains to escape everlasting misery? Will faint wishes take the kingdom of heaven by force? Will such drowsy endeavors as most men satisfy themselves with, be accounted fleeing from the wrath to come?
You who have already fled to Christ, up, and be doing. You who have begun the work, go on and loiter not, but ’work out your salvation with fear and trembling’. ’Fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell’. Remember you are not yet ascended into heaven; you are but in your middle state. The everlasting arms have drawn you out of the gulf of wrath you were plunged into, in your natural state; they are still underneath you, that you can never fall down into it again. Nevertheless, you have not yet got up to the top of the rock; the deep below you is frightful- look at it, and hasten your ascent.
You who are yet in your sinful state, lift up your eyes and take a view of the eternal state. Arise, you profane persons, you ignorant ones, you formal hypocrites, strangers to the power of godliness, and flee from the wrath to come!
Let not the young venture to delay a moment longer, nor the old put off this work any more- ’Today if you will hear his voice, harden not your hearts;’ lest He swear in His wrath that you shall never enter into His rest.
It is no time to linger in a state of sin, as in Sodom, when fire and brimstone are coming down on it from the Lord. Take warning in time. They who are in hell are not troubled with such warnings, but are enraged against themselves, because they slighted the warning when they had it.
Consider, I beg you, how uneasy it is to lie one whole night on a soft bed in perfect health, when we gladly would have sleep but cannot get it, sleep being departed from us. How often do we in that case, wish for rest! how full of tossings to and fro! But ah! how dreadful must it be to lie in sorrow, wrapped up in scorching flames throughout eternity, in that place where they have no rest day nor night!
How terrible would it be to live under violent pains of the cholic or stone for forty or sixty years together without any intermission! Yet that is but a very small thing compared with eternal separation from God, the worm that never dies, and the fire that is never quenched!
Eternity is an awful thought! O long, long endless eternity! But will not every moment in eternity of woe seem a month, and every hour a year, in that most wretched and desperate condition? Hence, ’ever and ever’, as it were, a double eternity. The sick man in the night, tossing to and fro on his bed, says it will never be day, and complains that his pain ever continues- it never, never abates. Are these ’petty time-eternities’, which men form to themselves in their own imaginations, so very grievous? Alas! then, how grievous, how utterly insupportable, must a real eternity of woe, and all manner of miseries, be!
There will be space enough there to reflect on all the ills of our heart and life, which we cannot get time to think of now; and to see that all that was said of the impenitent sinner’s hazard was true, and that the half was not told. There will be space enough in eternity to carry on delayed repentance, to lament one’s follies when it is too late; and in a state past remedy to speak forth these fruitless wishes- O that I had never been born! that the womb had been my grave, and I had never seen the sun!
O that I had taken warning in time, and fled from this wrath while the door of mercy was standing open to me! O that I had never heard the Gospel, that I had lived in some corner of the world where a Savior and the great salvation were not once named! But all in vain. What is done cannot be undone; the opportunity is lost, and can never be retrieved; time is gone, and can never be recalled. Therefore, improve time while you have it, and do not willfully ruin yourself by stopping your ear to the Gospel call. And now, if you would be saved from the wrath to come, and never go into this place of torment, take no rest in your natural state; believe the sinfulness and misery of it, and labor to get out of it quickly, fleeing unto Jesus Christ by faith.
Sin in you is the seed of hell- and if the guilt and reigning power of it be not removed in time, they will bring you to the second death in eternity.
There is no way to get them removed, but by receiving Christ as He is offered in the Gospel, for justification and sanctification- and He is now offered to you with all His salvation (Revelation 22:12, Revelation 22:17), ’And behold, I come quickly, and my reward is with me, to give to every man according as his work shall be. And the Spirit and the bride say, Come; and let him that hears say, Come; and let him that is thirsty come. And whoever will, let him take the water of life freely.’
Jesus Christ is the Mediator of peace, and the fountain of holiness- He it is who delivers us from the wrath to come. ’There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit’ (Romans 8:1). The terrors of hell, as well as the joys of heaven, are set before you, to stir you up to a cordial receiving of Him, with all His salvation; and to incline you to the way of faith and holiness, in which alone you can escape the everlasting fire. May the Lord Himself make them effectual to that end!