Category: Bible

I have spent many weeks giving Richard Baxter’s (1615-1691) reasons for calling sinners to turn to God without delay (and we’re not finished!).  He believed it important to lay out the reasons to believe in Christ to men and women who did not care about Jesus Christ while they still had time.  You get some of the urgency even in his titled, “Why a Sinner ought to turn to God without delay.”

Richard Baxter was a part of a movement among Christ-centered folk in England in the 16th-17th centuries; these were the times of the “Puritans.”  At first, this was a pejorative hurled at these peculiar people.  The early Puritans didn’t take to the name.  Yet, eventually, it did come to capture the essence of their zeal.  These folks were not convinced that they knew enough of Jesus Christ themselves, as churches and as a culture.  They were unsatisfied with the worship of the time.  They were dissatisfied with the morals of the time.  And, they knew each of them would see an end of their time.

They had some advantages over us.  They had plagues.  They had high infant and adult mortality rates (life expectancy: 35).  Eighty hour work weeks.  There was civil war.  Aggressive French and Spanish.  Turmoil in parliament.  Dynasties of kings and queens that seemed in-and-then-out, tolerant-then-persecuting.  Water was bad.  Rats were bad.

Advantages?  At least they didn’t have to look far for reasons to expect a short life.  As a result, when the preacher stood up and spoke of hell as the dead’s reward for unbelief and heaven for their belief, people took notice.  There was clutter, of course.  Human cultures have always created structures to keep our minds off of eternity.  This wasn’t necessarily a time when people were more open to religious things even if their living conditions contained more squalor than ours.  Yet, mortality was hard to avoid or ignore.

So, Baxter begins to entreat his people to quit delaying and close with Christ; make Him their own.  Many did: when he began his ministry in Kidderminster, drunkenness, profaning the Lord’s Day, and a general disregard for Christ were rampant.  At the end of his time there, rather than drinking songs being heard all around, it was hymns that were sung.  Most of the town had been converted to Christ and were striving hard after Him.

The results of his ministry were proof that he was zealous for all the people under his influence to hear about Jesus Christ and seal the deal with him.  He understood the stakes were high – have you considered the stakes?

If a person believes in Jesus Christ and follows Him, he has decided upon a course of life that includes many things good and hard.  And, when it is all said and done, heaven itself.  What’s your view of heaven?  What’s it like?  Here’s one:

21 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.

Most people who think about these things, create a picture of heaven that encourages them.  Yet, many of those same people imagine a way to get there that doesn’t include submitting themselves to Jesus Christ.  But He has clearly told us that the only way to the Father, to heaven, is through Him.  So, the choice that I have is to allow some to persist in believing everything’s alright when in fact, when one opens his eyes to his eternity, he would see nothing that he ever imagined and only all that he ever feared.

You can delay if you want.  You can resist and deny Christ.  You can continue to be satisfied with a small life of carnal pursuits thinking that “a good God wouldn’t send anyone to hell.”  But you’d be wrong in every way.  And not just wrong: condemned.

Now is the time to believe in Jesus Christ and follow Him.  You will be wise to do so, never disappointed in having done so and blessed beyond all reckoning.

Pastor Gabe

Have you ever asked a person an important question that required a response?  Not like a text or a tweet or a Facebook message or even an email…but a significant question of profound import that affected you and your decisions?  You ask; the person knows it’s important and he knows that you want a response.

And then he does nothing.

You ask again.

Still, no response.

Again you ask – this time you reiterate the significance, importance and impact of the question hoping that he’s simply been overcome with some important issue that has caused him to delay an answer.  You do pretty much all you can to make sure that he knows the stakes.

Still, he gives no answer.

Has that made you mad?  Seriously, you know a situation like that just boils your blood.  You think (rightly) that it is common courtesy to give an answer in general and, in this specific instance of heightened importance, you’re past common courtesy.  A failure to respond is rude and wrong.

Richard Baxter explains that in like manner, your failure to respond to God’s invitation to believe and follow Christ increases the wrath of God.  In fact, our blood boils when we are treated that way because God’s anger breaks out against all of those who repeatedly ignore or refuse His gracious invitation to eternal life.  Here’s Baxter:

And as sin increases daily by delay, so consequently the wrath of God increases and you will run further into his displeasure and possibly you may cut down the bough that you stand upon and hasten destruction to yourselves.  When you live daily upon God, an are kept out of hell by a miracle of His mercy, methinks you should not desire yet longer to provoke him, lest he withdraw his mercy and let you fall into misery.

The Bible says (Hebrews 1:1-2),

Long ago, at many times and in many ways God spoke to our fathers by the prophets but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son whom he appointed the heir of all things through whom also he created the world.

How long will you let God’s invitation to you to turn from your sins and rebellion, trust in Him and receive an abundant life the likes of which you can scarcely imagine?  Why do you still wait?  Turn to Christ and live.

Pastor Gabe

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Many years ago, my wife’s mother was diagnosed with breast cancer.  At that time, there wasn’t necessarily the urgency around those things as there is now.  She was told to wait, come back in six months and reevaluate.  I’m not sure what it would be like if someone told me I had cancer and that I needed to “wait and see” – that would be a daily battle for me.  Nonetheless, she waited and returned six months later.

The cancer had spread greatly, infected those areas of the body that make battling it too difficult, and she died four years later.  It was a tragic and sad time for her and her family.  (My wife, did, however, have many questions of God that eventually led her to trusting in Him for her salvation; God has a way of using death to bring life.)  In the end, each day she waited, was a day that gave her cancer freer reign and access to her body.  As a result, each day the cancer slowly grew and spread and once they tried to reverse its effects, it could not be done.  Death came naturally as a result.

Richard Baxter points to a very similar action sin has in the lives of people who ignore it.

Moreover, the delay of conversion continues your sin and so you will daily increase their number and increase your guilt and make your souls abundantly miserable.

Are you not deep enough in debt to God already, and have you not sins enough to answer for upon your souls?  Would you fain have one year’s sin more or one day’s sin more to be charged upon you?  O, if you did but know what sin is, it would amaze you to think what a mountain lies already upon your consciences!  One sin unpardoned will sink the sinner into hell; and you have many a thousand upon your souls already, and would you yet have more?

Cancer is a true analogy to sin: to wait and see will lead to more of both.  Once present, no one really knows how much will kill the body, do they?  True also, the Bible tells us that tomorrow is not guaranteed for any of us, so why not turn to Jesus Christ today?  If you turn to Him and confess your waywardness and your rebellion, He will not refuse you – He will save you.

Pastor Gabe