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Christ’s Object Lessons
helpless ones. Give them your courage, your hope, your strength. By
kindness compel them to come. “Of some have compassion, making
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a difference; and others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire.”
Jude 22, 23
.
If the servants of God will walk with Him in faith, He will give
power to their message. They will be enabled so to present His love
and the danger of rejecting the grace of God that men will be con-
strained to accept the gospel. Christ will perform wonderful miracles
if men will but do their God-given part. In human hearts today as
great a transformation may be wrought as has ever been wrought in
generations past. John Bunyan was redeemed from profanity and
reveling, John Newton from slave dealing, to proclaim an uplifted
Saviour. A Bunyan and a Newton may be redeemed from among men
today. Through human agents who co-operate with the divine, many
a poor outcast will be reclaimed, and in his turn will seek to restore
the image of God in man. There are those who have had very meager
opportunities, who have walked in ways of error because they knew no
better way, to whom beams of light will come. As the word of Christ
came to Zacchaeus, “Today I must abide at thy house” (
Luke 19:5
),
so the word will come to them; and those who were supposed to be
hardened sinners will be found to have hearts as tender as a child’s
because Christ has deigned to notice them. Many will come from the
grossest error and sin, and will take the place of others who have had
opportunities and privileges but have not prized them. They will be
accounted the chosen of God, elect, precious; and when Christ shall
come into His kingdom, they will stand next His throne.
But “see that ye refuse not Him that speaketh.”
Hebrews 12:25
.
Jesus said, “None of those men which were bidden shall taste of My
supper.” They had rejected the invitation, and none of them were to
be invited again. In rejecting Christ, the Jews were hardening their
hearts, and giving themselves into the power of Satan so that it would
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be impossible for them to accept His grace. So it is now. If the love
of God is not appreciated and does not become an abiding principle
to soften and subdue the soul, we are utterly lost. The Lord can give
no greater manifestation of His love than He has given. If the love of
Jesus does not subdue the heart, there are no means by which we can
be reached.