Spurgeon: April AM
* 04/08/AM
"If they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in
the dry?"
--Luke 23:31
Among other interpretations of this suggestive question, the
following is full of teaching: "If the innocent substitute for
sinners, suffer thus, what will be done when the sinner himself
--the dry tree--shall fall into the hands of an angry God?" When
God saw Jesus in the sinner's place, He did not spare Him; and
when He finds the unregenerate without Christ, He will not spare
them. O sinner, Jesus was led away by His enemies: so shall you
be dragged away by fiends to the place appointed for you. Jesus
was deserted of God; and if He, who was only imputedly a sinner,
was deserted, how much more shall you be? " Eloi, Eloi, lama
sabachthani ?" what an awful shriek! But what shall be your cry
when you shall say, "O God! O God! why hast Thou forsaken me?"
and the answer shall come back, "Because ye have set at nought
all My counsel, and would none of My reproof: I also will laugh
at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh." If God
spared not His own Son, how much less will He spare you! What
whips of burning wire will be yours when conscience shall smite
you with all its terrors. Ye richest, ye merriest, ye most
self-righteous sinners--who would stand in your place when God
shall say, "Awake, O sword, against the man that rejected Me;
smite him, and let him feel the smart for ever"? Jesus was spit
upon: sinner, what shame will be yours! We cannot sum up in one
word all the mass of sorrows which met upon the head of Jesus
who died for us, therefore it is impossible for us to tell you
what streams, what oceans of grief must roll over your spirit
if you die as you now are. You may die so, you may die now. By
the agonies of Christ, by His wounds and by His blood, do not
bring upon yourselves the wrath to come! Trust in the Son of
God, and you shall never die.