Divided Interest
113
“Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be
whiter than snow.” “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a
right spirit within me.” “Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation; and
uphold me with Thy free spirit.”
The blood of Christ is efficacious, but it needs to be applied con-
tinually. God not only wants His servants to use the means He has
entrusted to them for His glory, but He desires them to make a conse-
cration of themselves to His cause. If you, my brethren, have become
selfish and are withholding from the Lord that which you should
cheerfully give to His service, then you need the blood of sprinkling
thoroughly applied, consecrating you and all your possessions to God.
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My much-respected brethren, you have not that earnest and un-
selfish devotion to the work of God that He requires of you. You have
given your attention to temporal matters. You have trained your minds
for business in order to thereby benefit yourselves. But God calls for
you to come into closer union with Him, that He may mold and train
you for His work. A solemn statement was made to ancient Israel
that the man who should remain unclean and refuse to purify himself
should be cut off from among the congregation. This has a special
meaning for us. If it was necessary in ancient times for the unclean to
be purified by the blood of sprinkling, how essential for those living
in the perils of the last days, and exposed to the temptations of Satan,
to have the blood of Christ applied to their hearts daily. “For if the
blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the
unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: how much more shall
the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself
without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve
the living God?”
You should both do much more than you have done toward bearing
the burdens of the work of the Lord. I adjure you to arouse from your
lethargy, leave the vain idolatry of worldly things, and be in earnest
to secure a title to your immortal inheritance. Work while it is day.
Do not imperil your souls by forfeiting present opportunities. Do not
make your eternal interests of secondary importance. Do not put the
world before religion, and toil day after day to acquire its riches, while
the peril of eternal bankruptcy threatens you. Every day is bringing
you nearer to the final reckoning. Be ready to yield up the talents lent
you, with the increase gained by their wise use.