Calvary Road Baptist Church
“COMPEL THEM TO COME IN”
Luke 14.23
This morning’s message is adapted from one originally preached by Charles Haddon Spurgeon. My text is Luke 14.23:
“Compel them to come in.”
It’s a message especially applicable to several of you here this morning.
You know that you are fallen, fallen in your father, Adam. Know also that you have fallen in yourself by your daily sins and your constant iniquities. You provoke God to anger by your continual wickedness. As assuredly as you have sinned, so certainly must God punish you if you continue in your iniquity. For you see, God is a God of justice and will by no means spare the guilty. But have you not heard, over and over again, that God, in His infinite mercy, has devised a way whereby, without any infringement upon His honor, He can have mercy upon you, though you are guilty and undeserving?
Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, descended from heaven and was made in the likeness of sinful flesh. Begotten of the Holy Spirit, He was born of the virgin Mary and lived in this world a life of exemplary holiness and the deepest suffering until, at last, He gave Himself up to die for my sins,
“the just for the unjust, that He might to bring us to God.”[1]
Therefore, let me declare God’s simple plan of salvation to you:
“Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.”[2]
You who have violated all the precepts of God, who have turned your back on His mercy, and who have dared His vengeance, there is yet mercy proclaimed:
“This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.”[3]
Whosoever comes to Him He will in no wise cast out:
“Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for” us.[4]
All that God demands of you, and this He gives you, is that you will look to His bleeding, dying Son and trust Him, Whose name alone can save you from your sins that condemn your soul to Hell. Is it not an amazing thing that the proclamation of this Gospel does not receive the unanimous endorsement of everyone everywhere?
You would imagine, as soon as it was preached, “That whosoever believeth shall have eternal life,” every one of you, “casting away every man his sins and his iniquities,” would lay hold on Jesus Christ and look to His cross alone. But that doesn’t happen, does it? Such is the desperate evil of your nature, such is the depravity of your character, that the message of the Gospel is despised, the invitation of the Gospel is rejected, and many of you are at this moment enemies of God by your wicked works.
You are enemies of the God Who proclaims Christ to you, enemies to Him Who sent His Son to give His life a ransom for many. This set of circumstances is strange, yet nevertheless, it is a fact. And this is the reason for the necessity for the command of our text today,
“Compel them to come in.”
Christians? You who are believers, I have nothing to say to you this morning. I’m cutting to the chase. I’m going after those who will not come and those in the byways and hedges. And, with God’s help, it is my duty now to fulfill the command,
“Compel them to come in.”
There are two things I must do:
First, I MUST FIND YOU OUT
Previous to our text, the Lord Jesus said,
“Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, the maimed, the halt, and the blind.”
I see there are poor here this morning. I am to compel you to come in. You may be materially poor, but that’s no barrier to your salvation. God has not exempted from His grace the person who wears old clothes and can’t afford a new pair of shoes. If there is any distinction to be made, the distinction is on your side and for your benefit:
“To you is the word of this salvation sent.”[5]
“The poor have the gospel preached unto them.”[6]
However, let me focus on you, who are poor spiritually. You have no faith, you have no virtue, you have no good work, you have no grace, and what is worse still, you have no hope. How do I know you have no hope? First, the Bible says so, Ephesians 2.12. Also, people with hope do not contemplate suicide by violence, or lifestyle. But the Master has sent you a gracious invitation. Come and be welcomed to the marriage feast:
“Whosoever will, let him come and take of the water of life freely.”[7]
Come. My assignment is to lay hold on you, even if you are defiled with the foulest filth, even though your righteousnesses are as filthy rags. Still, I must lay hold on you, invite you first, and even compel you to come in.
As well, I see you who are maimed, you who are crippled. There was a time when you thought you could work out your own salvation without God’s help, when you thought you could perform good deeds, when you thought you could, by religious ceremonies or by attending Church perhaps, get to heaven by yourself. But now you are maimed. The sword of God’s Law has cut off your hands. You can do good deeds no longer. You’ve lost all power to obey God’s will. You feel that when you would do good, evil is present with you. You are spiritually disabled. You’ve given up, as a lost cause, all attempts to save yourself. Why? You are maimed, and your arms are gone. But you are worse off than that, for if you could not work your way to heaven, you would walk there along the road by faith. But you find yourself crippled in the feet and the hands. You feel that you cannot believe, that you cannot repent, that you cannot obey the demands of the Gospel. You think that you are utterly undone, powerless in every respect to do anything that can please God. Well, I’m sent to you, also. I’m charged to lift up before you the bloodstained banner of the cross. To you am I to preach this Gospel,
“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”[8]
And unto you am I to cry, “Whosoever will, come and take of the water of life freely.”
There is yet a third class here. It’s you who are halted, halting between two opinions. You are sometimes seriously moved by the Gospel, and at other times the allurements of the world call you away. What little progress you do make spiritually is temporary. You have little strength, but it’s so little that you only make painful progress. It’s to you, too, lame friend, that the word of this salvation is sent. Even though you halt between two opinions, the Master sends me to you with this message:
“How long halt ye between two opinions? if the LORD be God, serve him: but if Baal be God, then follow him.”[9]
“Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live.”[10]
“Because I will do this unto thee, prepare to meet thy God.”[11]
My friend, halt no longer but decide for God and His truth.
The fourth class of those I am sent to is also you who are blind. You are the one who cannot see yourself. You think yourself good when you are full of evil. You put bitter for sweet, sweet for bitter, darkness for light, and light for darkness. God has sent me to you, as well. You, blind souls who cannot see your lost condition, do not believe your sin is so exceedingly sinful as it is and will not be persuaded to think that God is a just and righteous God. To you am I sent. Neither can you see the Savior. You are so blind that you see no beauty in Him that you should desire Him. You see no excellence in virtue, no glory in the cross, no happiness in serving God, no delight in being His child. To you, also, am I sent.
Who am I not sent to by this text? You see, the command goes farther than this. The Lord Jesus not only gives a particular description so that each case may be met, but afterward, He makes a general sweep and says, “Go into the highways and hedges.” Here we bring in all ranks and conditions of individuals. The dot com millionaire, the woman working her fingers to the bone, the man who delivers things for a living, the woman who handles customer complaints. All these are on the highway, and they are all to be compelled to come in. Imagine the poor soul in the hedges of life whose refuge of lies is swept away. She has given up on life and wants only to find some little shelter for her weary head. To you, also, am I sent this morning. This is a universal command:
“Compel them to come in.”
Now that I have described the characters involved let me pause to look at the task before me. As Paul said, “who is sufficient for these things?”[12] My friends, a preacher has as much likelihood of leading a sinner to the cross of Christ as a little child trying to bully and overwhelm Samson. And yet the Lord has called me to this task.
I wake each morning and see the great mountain of evidence of human depravity and apathy. No one cares. I will admit that sometimes I am overwhelmed by the immensity of the task. But by faith, I try. And what prompts me to try in the face of universal human depravity and indifference to the Gospel that might otherwise be so discouraging to me? It’s this declaration by God:
“Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts.”[13]
Does my Lord say, “Compel them to come in?” Then, though the sinner is strong to resist like Samson and I, a child, I will lead him with a thread. If God says to do it, it will get done if I attempt in faith. And if with a groaning, struggling, and weeping heart, I seek today to compel sinners to come to Christ, then I know that the sweet compulsion of the Holy Spirit will go with every word, and someone will be compelled to come in.
AND NOW TO THE SECOND THING I MUST DO. THE WORK.
Unconverted, unreconciled, unregenerate men and women and boys and girls, I am charged by God to compel you to come in.
Permit me, first, to meet you where you are in the highways and byways of sin, and there tell you what my errand is. God sends a gracious invitation to you this morning. He says,
“As I live, saith the LORD God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live.”[14]
“Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”[15]
I am thrilled that I have such good news to tell you. Yet I confess my soul becomes heavy when I see that you do not think it’s good news but turn away from it and do not give it its due regard.
Permit me to tell you what the King has done for you. He knew your guilt. He foresaw that you would ruin yourself. He knew that His justice would demand your blood, and so that this difficulty might be overcome, that His justice might have its full due, and that you might yet be saved. Jesus Christ has died. Will you just, for a moment, glance at this picture? Look at a Man on His face praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, sweating great drops of blood. Next, observe Him, a miserable Sufferer tied to a pillar and lashed with terrible scourges, till His ribs are seen like white islands in the midst of a sea of blood. Now, see a third picture. This same Man is hanging on the cross with His hands extended and His feet nailed fast, dying, groaning, bleeding. He raises His head and speaks out, “It is finished.”[16] This is what Jesus of Nazareth has done so that God might consistently pardon your sin with His justice. And the message to you this morning is this:
“Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.”[17]
That is, trust Him, renounce your works and ways, and set your heart alone on this Man, Who gave Himself for sinners.
Well, I’ve told you the message. What’s your response? Do you turn away from the offer? You tell me, “I’m not interested. Maybe some other time.” But you will leave here and go home to play a video game. You will leave here and hang out with friends or shoot baskets. Hold on, just a second! I was not told merely to tell you and then go about my business. Oh, no. I am told to compel you to come in. So, permit me to observe to you before I go further that there is one thing I can say, with God as my witness this morning. I am sincere in my desire that you should obey this command of God. You may despise your own salvation, but I don’t. You may go away and forget most of what you’ve heard today, but please remember that the things I now say cost me heartache and prayers before I came here to say them to you. My soul cries out to you, my friend when I urge you by Him that lives and was dead and is alive forever. Consider my Master’s message, which He commanded me to deliver to you.
Do you spurn the message? Do you refuse the command to enter in? Do you ignore Christ’s invitation? Then I must change my tone a bit. I will not merely tell you the message and invite you as I do with all sincerity and genuine affection. I will go further. Sinner, in God’s name, I command you to repent and believe. Do you ask me by what right and authority I command you? I am an ambassador of heaven. Some of my credentials are secret, and some of them are visible. Some are hidden away in my heart, known only to me, but other credentials are sitting around you, seals of my ministry, souls that God has given me as the fruit of my ministry. As the eternal God has given me the commission to preach His Gospel, I command you to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Not on my own authority, but on the authority of Him Who said,
“Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.”
And what else did He say?
“He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned.”
Reject my message and remember that
“He that despised Moses’s law, died without mercy under two or three witnesses: of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God?”[18]
An ambassador should not stand below the man with whom he deals. He stands higher. So, if a preacher chooses to take his proper place before people, then he must command them, and speak with all authority, compelling them to come in:
“These things command and teach.”[19]
But you recoil and think, “Nobody tells me what to do.” Therefore, I will change my tone again. If one approach doesn’t work, I will resort to others. Friend, I speak plainly and urge you to flee the wrath of God and come to Jesus. Do you have any idea what a loving Savior Jesus is? Let me tell you from my own experience what I know of Him. You see, I, too, once despised Him. He knocked at my door, and I refused to open it. But He came to me again. He checked me in my conscience and spoke to me by His Spirit. And then, when He showed me His judgments against those who opposed Him, I was shocked and alarmed. Then God showed me in His Word that Jesus is the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. What a loving reception did I have when I went to Him. Some fear that He will strike them if they go to Him, but His hand is not clenched in anger. It’s opened wide in mercy. Some think that His eyes will pierce them through with anger and rage, but instead, they find warm and loving eyes full of tenderness. He took me in His arms and loved me. He took off my rags and clothed me with His righteousness. He caused my soul to sing aloud for joy. And in the house of my heart, there was music and dancing because His son that He had lost was found, and He that was dead was made alive. I urge you to look to Jesus Christ and be saved. Sinner, you will never regret coming to Christ. You will find the trials of the Christian life to be heavy, but you will also find that God’s grace will make them light. If you taste and see that the Lord is good, you will see that He is not only good, but that He is better than the human tongue can describe.
Now, let me appeal to your own self-interests. Wouldn’t it be better for you to be reconciled to the God of heaven than to be His enemy? What do you gain by opposing God? Are you the happier being His enemy than you would be as His friend? Answer, pleasure-seeker. Is your life so enjoyable? Answer me, self-righteous man. Have you found rest in all your works? And you who goes about to establish your own righteousness. Let your conscience speak. Have you found your way to a happy path? I urge you by everything sacred and solemn, by everything important and eternal. Flee for your life. Are you still cold and indifferent? Will not the blind man permit me to lead him to the feast? Will not my lame friend put his hand upon my shoulder and permit me to assist him to the banquet? Will not the poor man allow me to walk side-by-side with him?
Must I use stronger words? Must I use some other compulsion to compel you to come in? By God’s grace, I am committed to one thing this morning. If you are not saved, you will be without excuse for your condemnation. From you who are gray-headed down to you who are children, if you do not lay hold of Christ today, your blood will be on your own head, not mine. If there is any power in a man to bring his fellow men to Christ (and there is when the Holy Spirit helps a man), then that power will be exercised this morning, God helping me. Come! Your refusals will not put me off. If my pleadings fail, I’ll have to come at you another way. Listen! Listen to me this morning! Do you have any idea Who it is you are rejecting this morning? You are rejecting Jesus Christ, your only Savior:
“Other foundation can no man lay.”
“There is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.”[20]
My heart breaks at what you are doing. You see, I remember what you are forgetting: the day is coming when you will want a Savior. It’s not long before the years quickly pass, and your strength will begin to decline, your pulse will fail you, and your strength departs, and you and the grim monster death must face each other. What will you do at the threshold of eternity without a Savior? Deathbeds are cold and lonely places without the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s an awful thing to die in any case. He who has the best hope, and the most triumphant faith, still finds that death is nothing to laugh at.
It is a terrible thing to pass from the seen to the unseen, from the mortal to the immortal, from time to eternity. And you will find it hard to go through the iron gates of death without the sweet wings of angels to escort your eternal soul to the heavenly city. It will be a hard thing for you to die without Christ. I can’t help thinking of you then. I see you acting the part of a suicide this morning, and I picture myself someday standing at your bedside and hearing you cry and knowing that you are dying without hope. I can’t stand that. It seems like I am standing next to your coffin right now, looking into your hard, cold face, and thinking, “This one despised Jesus Christ and neglected the great salvation.” I think what bitter tears I will weep then if I have been unfaithful to you. I see your lips in the coffin, unmoving but saying to me,
“Preacher, I was in the auditorium, but you didn’t plead with me, you didn’t command me, you didn’t demand me. You amused me, you preached to me, but you did not plead with me. You did not know what Paul meant when he said, ‘As though God did beseech you by us we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God.’”
Let this message enter your heart for another reason. I picture myself standing in the courtroom of God. As the Lord lives, the Day of Judgment is coming. Do you believe that? You are not an infidel, are you? Your conscience would not permit you to doubt the Bible, would it? Perhaps you may have pretended to doubt, but you can’t. You feel there must be a day when God shall judge the world in righteousness. I see you standing in the midst of that throng, and the eye of God is fixed on you. It seems that He is not looking anywhere else but at you only. Then He summons you before Him, and He reads your sins. And He pronounces, “Depart from me.”
I hate to think of you in that position. It crushes me to think that you will finally be damned. Will you picture yourself in that position? The word has gone forth, “Depart, ye cursed.” Do you see the pit as it opens up to swallow you? Listen to the shrieks and the yells of those who have preceded you to that eternal lake of torment. Instead of picturing the scene, I turn to you with the words of Isaiah the prophet, and I say,
“Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?”
I can’t let you put away the Gospel in this way. No. I think of what’s to come after death. What kind of man am I to observe a person about to drink poison if I did not knock away the cup? How then can I not, with all love, kindness, and earnestness, urge you to “lay hold on eternal life,” “to labor not for the meat that perisheth, but for the meat that endureth unto everlasting life?”
Some young hyper-Calvinist in the making may tell me I am wrong for pleading with you this way, but I don’t care what he thinks. I have to do this. You see, I must stand before the Judgment Seat of Christ someday. And I will not have made full proof of my ministry unless I plead with many tears for you to be saved unless I urge you to look unto Jesus Christ and receive His glorious salvation.
But does this do no good? Are all my efforts lost on you? Do you still turn a deaf ear? Then again, I change my approach. Sinner, I have pleaded with you as a man pleads with his friend. And were it for my own life, I could not speak more sincerely this morning than I speak concerning yours. I was concerned about my own soul, but not a bit more than I am about you this morning. So, if you ignore me, I have something else. I must threaten you. You’ll not always have such warnings as these. A day is coming when the voice of every Gospel preacher will be silent, at least for you, because your ears will be cold and dead. There will then be no more threatening. It will then be the fulfillment of the threatening. There will then be no promise, no proclamations of pardon and mercy, no words of peace with God. Instead, you will be in the land where preaching the Gospel is forbidden because it’s to no avail. Then, I charge you to listen to this voice that now addresses your conscience. For if you do not, then God will speak to you in His wrath, and say unto you in His hot displeasure,
“Because I have called and ye refused; I stretched out my hand and no man regarded; ... I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh.”[21]
Sinner, I threaten you again. Remember, it is but a short time you may have to hear these warnings. You imagine your life will be long, but do you know how short it is? Have you ever tried to think how frail you are? Did you ever see a body cut in pieces at an autopsy? Did you ever see such a marvelous thing as the human body? What a wonderful instrument it is. But let one chicken McNugget go in the wrong direction, and you may die. The slightest thing may swiftly send you to death when God wills it. Strong men have been killed by the smallest and slightest accident, and so may you. In the Church house, men have dropped dead, as happened in a Church we once attended on vacation. A man, 38 years old, died of a heart attack on a Sunday morning, a January 30th, two weeks to the day before his daddy, the pastor, died. My friend, Pastor Jim Miller, sat down behind his desk on a Saturday evening several months ago and died of a heart attack. And are you sure that heart of yours is quite sound? Are you quite sure of that? And if it is sound, for how long will it be sound?
There are some of you here who may never see Thanksgiving Day. It may be the mandate has gone forth already, “Set thine house in order, for thou shalt die and not live.” How many in our congregation will be dead in a year? I remind you that either the gate of salvation may be shut on you, or else you may be where there is no gate of mercy. Come, then. Let the threatening influence you. I do not threaten because I would alarm you without cause, but in the hope that my threatening may drive you to the place where God has prepared the feast of the Gospel. So now, must I turn hopelessly away? Have I said all that I can say?
No. I’m coming at you again. Tell me what it is that keeps you from Christ. I hear one say, “It’s because I feel too guilty.” That cannot be, my friend. That cannot be. “But I am the chief of sinners.” No, you’re not. The chiefest of sinners died and went to heaven many years ago. His name was Saul of Tarsus, and he afterward was called Paul the apostle. He was the chiefest of sinners. “No,” you say still. “I am too vile.” You cannot be viler than the chiefest of sinners.
You must, at least, be second worst. Even supposing you are the worst now alive, you are second worst since he was the chiefest. But suppose you are the worst. Isn’t that the very reason why you should come to Christ? The worse a person is, the more reason to go to the hospital. The more poor you are, the more reason you should accept the charity of another. The worse you are, the more welcome you are. But let me ask you a question: Do you think you will ever get better by staying away from Christ? If so, you know very little about salvation. No, sir, the longer you stay away, the worse you will get. Your despair will become stronger. The nail with which Satan has fastened you down will be more firmly driven.
Come. There’s nothing to be gained by delay, but by delay, everything may be lost. “But I feel I cannot believe.” No, my friend, and you never will believe if you look first at your believing. Remember, I am not come to invite you to faith, but I am come to invite you to Christ. But you say, “What’s the difference?” Our first business has not to do with faith but with Christ. Come to Calvary and see the cross. Behold the Son of God, Who made the heavens and the earth, dying for your sins. Look to Him. Is there not power in Him to save? Look at His face so full of compassion. Is there not love in His heart that shows Him willing to save? Sinner, the sight of Christ will help you to believe. Do not believe first and then go to Christ, or your faith will be worthless. Go to Christ without faith, cast yourself upon Him, sink or swim.
“But you don’t know how many times I’ve rejected the Lord.” I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. I know my Master has sent me to compel you to come in. So, come along now. You may have rejected a thousand invitations. Don’t make this one more. You’ve been to the house of God, and you’ve only been Gospel hardened. But don’t be hardened by this morning’s sermon. O, Spirit of the living God, come and melt this heart as it has never been melted, and compel him, compel her, to come in! Did one of you think that this is not a convenient time? When will your convenient time come? Will it come when you’re in Hell? Will that time be convenient? Will it come when you’re on your death bed, and the death rattle is in your throat? Will it come, then? No, it won’t come, then. This morning is the convenient time. May God make it so.
Remember, I have no authority to ask you to come to Christ tomorrow. The Master has given you no invitation to come to Him on Tuesday. The invitation is, “Today if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts as in the provocation.” The Spirit says, “today.” “Come now, let us reason together.” Why should you put it off? It may be the last warning you will ever hear. Put it off, and you may never again be pleaded with as I plead with you now. You may go away, and God may say, “He is given unto idols, let him alone.” Maybe God will throw the reins on your neck like a horse. And then your course will be sure, but it will be sure damnation and swift destruction.
Again, is it all a waste of time? Will you not now come to Christ? No? Then what more can I do? I have but one more tack to try. I can weep for you. I can pray for you. You can scorn the sermon if you like. You can laugh at me if you want to. Call me a fanatic, but I’ll take to God no accusation against you. Your offense, so far as I’m concerned, is forgiven before it’s committed. But you will someday remember that the message you are rejecting this morning is a message from One Who loved you, and it was given to you from the mouth of someone who loves you.
You will someday recollect that you played your soul away with the devil, that you thought it to be a matter of no importance. But there lives at least one person who is serious about your soul. And there is at least one person who wrestled with God for strength to preach to you before he came here, and who when he is gone from this place will not forget you. Again, when words fail us, we can give tears, for words and tears are the arms with which Gospel preachers compel men to come in. You do not know, and I suppose could not understand, how a man God has called to the Gospel ministry feels about his congregation, especially about some of you.
Young men, you may not pray for yourselves, but your mothers wrestle for you. You will not think of your own souls, but your father’s heart agonizes for you. I have been at prayer meetings where believers in prayer could not have prayed with more earnestness and more intensity of anguish if they had been each of them been seeking their own soul’s salvation. And is it not strange that we should be ready to move heaven and earth for your salvation and that still you should have no thought for yourself, no regard for eternal things?
There are some of you here who profess to be Christians. But unless I am mistaken, and I will be happy if I am mistaken, your profession is a lie. You claim to be converted, but you do not live up to your claim. You dishonor your claim. And some of you seem to habitually forsake God’s house, and who knows what sins worse than that you commit?
I ask you, who do not adorn the doctrine of God with your style of life, do you imagine that you can call me your pastor and not have my soul tremble over you and secretly weep for you? Is there nothing else I can do?
Yes, there is one more thing. God has given to His servants not the power of regeneration, but He has given them something akin to it. No man can regenerate his neighbor, and yet how are men born again? Does not the Apostle Paul say of someone that he begot him in his bonds?
The preacher has power given him by God to be considered both the father and the mother of those born into the family of God, for the Apostle Paul said that he travailed in birth for souls till Christ was formed in them. What can I do then? I can now appeal not to you but the Holy Spirit.
I know I have preached the Gospel, that I have preached it sincerely. I now challenge my Master to honor His Own promise. He has said His Word shall not return unto Him void, and it will not. The matter is in His hands, not mine. I cannot compel you, but the Spirit of God, Who has the key of the heart, He can compel.
Did you ever notice in the Revelation where it says, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock,” a few verses before, the same Person is described as He who has the key of David. So that if knocking will not avail, my Lord has the key and can and will come in. If the knocking does not prevail with you this morning, there remains still that secret opening of the heart by the Holy Spirit so that you shall be compelled.
It has been my duty to labor with you this morning as though it is all on me. But now, I throw the matter into my Master’s hands. It cannot be His will that we should travail in birth and yet not bring forth spiritual children. But the matter is now with Him. He is master of the heart, and the day shall declare it that some of you constrained by sovereign grace may have become the willing captives of the all-conquering Jesus and have bowed your hearts to Him through this morning’s sermon.
__________
[1] 1 Peter 3.18
[2] Acts 16.31
[3] 1 Timothy 1.15
[4] Hebrews 7.25
[5] Acts 13.26
[6] Matthew 11.5
[7] Revelation 22.17
[8] Matthew 11.28
[9] 1 Kings 18.21
[10] 2 Kings 20.1; Isaiah 38.1
[11] Amos 4.12
[12] 2 Corinthians 2.16
[13] Zechariah 4.6
[14] Ezekiel 33.11
[15] Isaiah 1.18
[16] John 19.30
[17] Acts 16.31
[18] Hebrews 10.29
[19] 1 Timothy 4.11
[20] Acts 4.12
[21] Proverbs 1.24, 26
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