The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit.
The Lord's Knowledge, Our Safeguard.
A sermon intended for reading on Lord's Day,
December 1st, 1895, delivered by C.
H.
Spurgeon at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington, on Thursday
evening, June 30th, 1887.
2 Peter 2, verse 9.
The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly
out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust
unto the day of judgment to be punished.
There are very narrow limits to our knowledge.
There is a great breadth to our conceit.
But the things that we really know are
very few after all.
He who is wisest will be the first
to confess his own ignorance.
Our faith in the superior knowledge of God
is a great source of comfort to us.
That he knows everything is a sort of
omnipresent covering to our naked ignorance.
Though we know not as yet, we rejoice
that he knows.
And it is better that he should know
than that we should know.
Knowledge is safer in the hands of God
than it would be in our hands.
The infinite God alone is to be trusted
with infinite knowledge.
The first words of our text, The Lord
knoweth, often come as a comfort to my
own mind.
The text says, The Lord knoweth how to
deliver the godly out of temptations.
This is only one of the many things
which the Lord knoweth.
For instance, sometimes we meet with perplexing doctrines.
Perhaps we endeavor to effect a reconciliation between
the predestination of God and the freedom of
human action.
It is better not to wade too far
into those deep waters, lest we lose ourselves
in an abyss.
The Lord knoweth.
There is a reconciling point in his mind
as to all the great truths which he
has revealed.
One was wishful the other night to tell
me some great secret which he had discovered.
But I was not so wishful to hear
it.
For I did not think that I should
be any holier or any happier if I
did hear it.
And I was just as pleased not to
know as I should have been to know
the secret.
That insatiable craving to know everything just draws
away the life of men from what ought
to be their insatiable craving, namely to be
like God, to know him, to trust him,
to love him, and to serve him.
Sometimes, dear friends, we come across puzzling prophecies.
Some brethren profess to know all about prophecy.
I do not.
Neither am I quite sure that they do.
This I know that you have only to
place one set of interpreters of prophecy over
against another set, and they speedily swallow one
another, as Aaron's rod swallowed the rods of
the magicians of Egypt.
But I am satisfied myself to feel that
the Lord knoweth.
And he knoweth how every prophecy will be
fulfilled, and the exact order in which the
prophecies will come to be facts.
We may make our prophetic charts if we
like, but God will follow his own chart.
We may think that we have discovered the
clue of the maze in the apocalypse and
in Daniel, but whether we have or have
not is of no very great consequence.
John and Daniel spake by the Holy Ghost,
and their words will all be fulfilled in
due time, and the Lord knoweth all about
the whole matter.
The same is in the case in reference
to the Lord's amazing promises.
Many of them are so amazingly bright and
grand that we sometimes ask ourselves, how can
all these things be fulfilled to us?
And possibly like Abraham, we may have a
divine promise, yet there may come a precept
or a providence which seems to murder the
promise and render its fulfillment impossible as when
God said to the patriarch, In Isaac shall
thy seed be called, and then bade him
offer up his son in whom the promise
was wrapped up.
Yet Abraham, although he did not know how
the promise would be fulfilled, staggered not because
of unbelief, for he felt that God knew.
God will keep his own promise, brethren.
We need not try to help him as
she did who sought to secure the blessing
for her favorite son by setting him on
an evil and mischievous piece of plotting to
deceive his aged father.
It is not your work to fulfill God's
promises.
You will have enough to do to obey
his precepts, and you will need his help
to enable you to do that.
He does not need your help in fulfilling
his promises, but you may say with regard
to the whole of them, the Lord knoweth
how to fulfill them, and he will fulfill
them to the dot of every eye and
the stroke of every tee.
Not one good thing that he has promised
shall ever fail to be bestowed upon those
who put their trust in him.
The like is the case also, dear friends,
with regard to afflictive providences.
I cannot see the wisdom of this trial,
says one.
I cannot understand why this trouble has befallen
me, says another.
Why do you wish to understand?
Why do you want to see?
We walk by faith, not by sight.
I have known what it is to feel
a thrill of sacred joy within my soul
when my divine master has set me a
task altogether beyond my strength.
I have felt if this work had been
only half as heavy as it is, I
might have attempted it.
But now I know that I cannot perform
this task in my own strength, so I
am cast upon omnipotence.
It is poor work, paddling about on the
muddy beach, lifting first one foot and then
the other.
The grand exercise is to swim, and you
must swim when you cannot touch the bottom.
Sometimes God puts us into an ocean of
afflictions where there seems to be no bottom
to the sea.
Our trials are altogether too heavy for us.
They quite overwhelm us.
Oh, then what a mercy it is if
we have faith enough to trust in God.
If Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had been summoned
to the common trial by ordeal well known
among our ancestors, that of walking over red
-hot plowshares, they might have hoped somehow to
pick their way.
But when they were bound in their coats,
their hosen and their hats, and their other
garments, and were cast in the midst of
the burning fiery furnace, where there was no
possibility of escape unless Jehovah Himself entered the
furnace with them, well then they had a
grander arena for the display of faith in
God.
They had passed from the littlenesses of human
possibility into the grandeurs of omnipotence, and God
was glorified as they walked loose in the
midst of the fire, having had nothing burnt
except their bonds.
It is a great gain when any tried
or persecuted child of God has the company
of his Heavenly Father, even in the midst
of the fiery trial to which he is
exposed.
It is the same with regard to grievous
temptations.
Some of the Lord's very dear children are
sorely tempted, sometimes by their own thoughts into
which Satan casts the bitterness of his blasphemies,
sometimes by trials at home which they cannot
understand, or by afflictions which seem like that
wind from the wilderness which smote the four
corners of the house where Job's children were
feasting.
Well now, at such times when we cannot
comprehend our temptations, but seem altogether in a
maze and at a stand, then let us
fall back on these three words, the Lord
knoweth.
The infinite breadth of divine wisdom comprehends all
our wants, all our sorrows, all our feeblenesses,
all our trials and temptations.
Let this be like an all-surrounding atmosphere
to us, breathing which we shall feel our
life strengthened and our hearts made glad.
In our text, the Apostle calls attention to
one item of God's knowledge.
He makes us feel quite safe as to
the government of the universe, seeing it is
in the hands of the All-Knowing One,
the Lord who knows, on the one hand,
how to deliver the godly out of temptations,
and on the other hand, how to reserve
the unjust unto the day of judgment to
be punished.
In considering these words, I shall ask you
first to think of the Lord's knowledge in
reference to character.
This may not appear on the surface of
the text, but it is evidently implied for
the Lord would not know how to deliver
the godly if he did not know who
were godly, and he would not know how
to reserve the unjust unto the future judgment
if he did not know who were unjust.
Reflect, then, for a few moments upon the
truth that the Lord knows the godly.
Sometimes they come under trials and temptations so
that they are not known to others.
Their former friends and their kindred stand aloof
from them as Job's friends and kindred did
from him.
The patriarch was so sorely smitten and wounded
that his three friends concluded he must be
a hypocrite.
He was perfect and upright, and one that
feared God and eschewed evil.
A very favorite of heaven, yet his friends
did not know him as one of the
godly because of the great trials which had
befallen him.
And sometimes, because of imperfections, others may not
know us to be godly.
It is a pity that it should be
so, that there are times when sin fiercely
assails the believer and he is sorely put
to it.
He himself has to confess that he gives
cause to others to stand in doubt of
him.
Well, beloved, when others do not know you
to be godly, the Lord knows you.
The Lord knoweth them that are his.
There have been secret passages between you and
God which nobody else can ever know.
He perceives your sincerity in the midst of
your infirmity, and though he will chasten you
for your sin, he still knows that you
do believe in him.
You may like Samson lose your eyes and
be shorn of your strength.
I pray that you may not fall so
low as that, but even if you do,
remember that it is written of the blinded
Nazarite, howbeit the hair of his head began
to grow again.
The Lord gave him back his former strength,
for notwithstanding all his folly and his sin,
he was a believer in Jehovah.
He had a firm, childlike faith in the
Most High, and in the power of that
faith he did great exploits, and the Lord,
even in Samson's death struggle, owned him as
his servant and avenged him of his adversaries.
Do not let us get into such a
condition that others may justifiably doubt us, but
if they maliciously doubt us, if without cause
they cast out our name as evil, if
they slander us and invent fictions and falsehoods
to injure our character, let us come back
to this which is implied, if not stated
in our text, the Lord knoweth the godly.
It may sometimes come as a great comfort
to us that the Lord knows the godly
when they do not know themselves.
I have heard some of God's people speak
as though this were not possible, but I
boldly assert it from my own observation of
hundreds of those who truly love the Lord.
We may sometimes be so beset with temptations,
and our spirit may so sink within us,
that we may have to stand in doubt
as to our own salvation and say, Am
I really the Lord's, or am I not?
There are times when we have to hear
the question from our own conscience.
And why should we not hear it from
our own conscience, since Peter heard it from
his master's own lips, Simon, son of Jonas,
lovest thou me?
I would like to say to you, with
the poet Kaufer, come then, a still small
whisper in your ear.
He has no hope who never had a
fear, and he who never doubted of his
state, he may perhaps, perhaps he may too
late.
It is not an ill thing to go
in search to the very foundations to see
whether there is peace between God and your
soul or not.
Some of the best of the Lord's servants
have had to go through the valley of
the shadow of death, wherein the voice of
the evil spirit has been louder in their
ears than the whisper of their own faith,
and they have had to stand still in
utter bewilderment.
They could not get their sword out of
its sheath, or if they could, they were
unable to use it, for it seemed as
if the enemy could not be touched by
their sword.
The only weapon they could handle was the
weapon of all prayer, as they cried out
in their anguish, My God, my God, why
hast thou forsaken me?
Now remember, when you do not know yourself
to be godly, God knows you.
Here is the comfort for our hearts, the
Lord knoweth the godly.
He knows both them and their way, but
the way of the ungodly shall perish.
As this is true about the godly, so
is it most solemnly certain concerning the ungodly.
The Lord knows the unjust.
That is to say, despite their loud pretensions
of piety, the Lord knows that they are
really ungodly.
They have joined the church, they wear the
name of Christian, they are even honored among
Christian men, but the Lord knows the unjust.
No gob of religion can conceal their wickedness,
no form of pious speech can hide the
insincerity of their hearts.
Oh, should there be any such here, may
this flash of light go right through them.
The Lord knows the unjust, whatever they may
pretend to be.
He knows them also, notwithstanding their great possessions.
I have seen the wicked in great power
and spreading himself like a green bay tree.
In many, a hollow profession has been gilded
over with riches, and because the man was
well to do, they thought that he must
be doing well.
Two very different things, however.
But God can read us through and through.
If we climbed to a throne, he would
discern the state of our heart even there.
And if we had the acclamations of a
nation for our devotion and piety, he would
discover us even then, for all things are
naked and open to the eyes of him
with whom we have to do.
Let this not be forgotten by any one
of us.
Let us not try to deceive the Lord,
but let everything be open and above board
before him.
There should be in us all the strictest
truthfulness.
I am afraid that there is a tinge
of hypocrisy even in the most gracious.
May God take it away from us and
let us walk in the light as he
is in the light, while the blood of
Jesus Christ, his son, still cleanseth us from
all sin, for we shall still need it.
Now let us come to the very moral
of the text, which is this.
The Lord's knowledge in reference to the godly.
The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly
out of temptations.
Notice their name, the godly.
That is, the people who know God.
He is no dream of fancy to them,
they know him.
He is the most real of all existences
to them.
Knowing him, they fear him.
They have learned to fear and tremble before
the Most High.
It was a name of scorn which they
gave to the society of friends when they
called them Quakers, but after all, it was
a right thing for them, like Moses, to
exceedingly fear and quake in the presence of
the Most High God.
The godly also trust God.
To them, God is the pillar of their
confidence, the brightness of their life, the life
of their light, the light of their delight.
They rest on him as on the rock
of ages, and they rest nowhere else.
These godly ones also love God.
Their heart goes out towards him.
He is their joy.
He is their companion, their friend.
He is all in all to them.
The Lord knows these godly ones, and he
makes them to know him.
The secret of the Lord is with them
that fear him, and he will show them
his covenant.
Well, it is certain that these godly ones
will have to suffer temptation.
Gold is tried in the furnace, good things
are tested and proved, and godly men are
tempted and afflicted and tried full often.
They shall, very few of them, get to
heaven without passing through the trying waters and
testing fires, else to them the promise would
not be true.
When thou passest through the waters, I will
be with thee, and through the rivers they
shall not overflow thee.
When thou walkest through the fires, thou shalt
not be burned, neither shall the flame kindle
upon thee.
The Lord knows all about them and their
trials, and especially, according to our text, the
Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out
of temptations.
Let us make a few observations upon that
truth.
The first is this.
His knowledge answers much better for them than
their own would do.
They do not know how they will be
delivered out of temptations.
Sometimes they make a guess and so make
a mistake, and then they are disappointed.
They would be far wiser if they left
knowledge to the Most High and kept to
their own sphere, which is that of trusting,
believing, and knowing that the Lord knows.
One says of Father Adam that he knew
a great deal, and it was a pity
that he did not know one thing more,
namely that he knew enough.
For had he known that he knew enough,
he would not have eaten the fruit of
the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil.
Thou knowest enough when thou believest.
If thou knowest nothing except how thou canst
put thy hand into the hand of God,
thou mayst go boldly on with a surer
tread than the best-sighted man ever knew
by his own wisdom alone.
Commit thy way unto the Lord, trust also
in him, and he shall bring it to
pass.
Better that the knowledge be with the Lord
thy head than in thine own head, for
thou art not the Lord.
The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly
out of temptations.
It is almost a cant expression among the
ungodly.
The Lord knows.
O, but let it be a very solemn
expression amongst us.
The Lord knoweth, and blessed be his name,
the Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly
out of temptations.
In the next place, his knowledge of their
case is perfect.
He knew the temptation before it came.
Before he appointed it, he weighed it in
his unerring scales.
Not in the big scale of the coal
merchant, but in the delicate scales of the
chemist who measures every tiny grain and has
a scale that will turn with the weight
of a single hair.
If God appoint me ten afflictions, the devil
himself cannot make eleven of them.
If the Lord shall put half an ounce
of a bitter ingredient into thy cup, all
the devils in hell cannot make an ounce
of it.
God knows thy affliction before it comes to
thee, and he knows it when it comes
to thee.
When Israel was in Egypt, the Lord knew
their afflictions.
Well said, David, thou hast known my soul
in adversities.
The Lord knows just where the trial touches
and pinches us, how we grieve under it,
how far it has gone, and how far
it must not go.
The Lord knows our afflictions with a perfect
knowledge before they come and when they come,
and he also knows all about them when
they go.
I do bless his name that he can
foresee the effect of trial upon his children.
He knows what grace it will brighten, he
knows what shams it will destroy, he knows
what it will teach us, and he knows
what it will make us unlearn, which we
thought we needed to know.
He knows all about us from beginning to
end, and consequently his knowledge of our temptations
is absolutely perfect, and we may be content
and rest in perfect peace.
He knoweth the way that I take, and
this is true in every case of every
child of God.
The Lord knoweth how to deliver not merely
some one godly man or some twenty godly
men, but the godly as a whole, all
of them.
Dear friend, to put it very personally, the
Lord knows how to deliver you out of
your present temptation, but do not you put
your hand to sin in order to deliver
yourself.
This is what Satan will tempt you to
do.
Lay not the hand of Uzzah even upon
the ark of the Lord, much less upon
any piece of furniture in thine own house.
Oh, the temptation there is sometimes to indulge
in a hasty temper, to speculate in business,
or to keep back a part of the
truth, or to pretend to be something which
you are not, or to allow a sin
to go unreproved because you wish to escape
reproach or to avoid censorious judgments.
No, the Lord knows how to deliver you,
and if He does not deliver you, then
say with those three holy children whom I
mentioned a few minutes ago, if it be
so, our God whom we serve is able
to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace,
and He will deliver us out of thine
hand, O King.
But if not, be it known unto thee,
O King, that we will not serve thy
gods nor worship the golden image which thou
hast set up.
Do not attempt to supplement the wisdom of
God with your insanity, for it is nothing
better than insanity when you fancy that you
can ever profit by wrongdoing.
God's knowledge, as revealed to us in this
verse, gives us a very comfortable thought.
If the Lord knows how to deliver the
godly out of temptation, then depend upon it.
There is a way of deliverance out of
every temptation.
The Lord does not know what does not
exist at all.
If He knows that there is a way
of deliverance, then there is a way of
deliverance, and there is a way of escape
for you.
You do not see it, do not ask
or want to see it.
Ah, those eyes of ours!
Would God they were put out, I was
going to say.
We see a great deal too much, brothers
and sisters, or we think we do.
And because we say we see, we go
blindly on, stumbling and blundering every foot of
the way.
It is for God to see, and it
is for us to believe and to trust
in Him.
There is a way of deliverance, and it
will be proved before long that there is
a way of deliverance for you.
If you believe it, you shall see it.
God knows how to deliver.
That means that there is a way of
deliverance, but it means more.
The Lord knows how to deliver the godly
in the way most profitable for themselves.
We have invented various ways of deliverance, but
God has not used them.
And then we have found out another way,
but He has not owned that.
And we have sought out another way, but
He would not have that.
No, He knows how to deliver.
So why do you come in with your
inventions?
Verily I say, apply that text even to
you.
God hath made man upright, but they have
sought out many inventions, even inventions for escaping
from trouble and trial.
But the Lord knows which is the best
way for their deliverance.
He will bring you out of Egypt, but
not in the way you thought, that you
should flee away on a sudden and escape
by stealth.
No, no, this is how He will deliver
you.
Even as He delivered Israel of old, He
brought them forth also with silver and gold.
And there was not one feeble person among
their tribes.
He will bring you out in a profitable
way and a right way.
And best of all, He will bring you
out in the way which will be most
glorifying to Himself.
With a high hand and an outstretched arm,
He led His people out of Egypt, shattering
all the might and pomp of the proudest
monarch of the day.
And the emancipated nations sang unto the Lord
a new song as they took their timbrels
and danced before Him who had triumphed gloriously
over their cruel oppressor.
That is what you also shall do yet.
The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly
out of temptations in the way that is
most glorious to Himself.
God's children ought to think less of what
is done at any time than of the
glory that God gets out of it.
We sometimes want to see a great work,
but a great work may not glorify God.
If there be a little, obscure, unknown work,
and to human eyes it remains almost a
secret, if it glorifies God, it is to
be preferred to the most gigantic wave of
supposed revival that after all would have left
behind it the names of men, but the
name of God would be forgotten.
In all things let God be glorified.
Oh, that we would always aim at this
object.
The salvation of men is a grand aim,
but it must always be in subordination to
the glory of the Lord that His arm
may be revealed and that all flesh may
see it together.
Oh, that God might be glorified by this
our prayer in our trials and in coming
out of our trials.
Father, glorify Thy name.
Now, I must say a few solemn and
weighty words upon the Lord's knowledge in reference
to the unjust and to reserve the unjust
until the day of judgment to be punished.
Observe that Peter does not say the ungodly.
He is not dealing with their inward character
so much as with their outward conduct.
They are unjust.
Ungodliness is unrighteousness, and sooner or later the
ungodly are seen to be unjust.
Ungodly men are legally unjust.
They have broken God's law and therefore they
are not justified in His sight.
Worse than that, they are evangelically unjust, for
they have not believed in the Lord Jesus
Christ and therefore they have not His justifying
righteousness to cover them.
And then they are practically unjust, for their
life is an injustice to God and to
men.
They have not received the sanctifying power of
the Spirit to make them just in their
daily lives.
God knows how to deal with these people.
Let me read Peter's words again.
The Lord knoweth how to reserve the unjust
until the day of judgment to be punished.
You hear their blasphemies, you mock their infamies,
and your indignation burns against them, but the
Lord knows how to deal with them.
He knows how to reserve them under restraints.
He acts like a magistrate who commits a
prisoner for trial to the assizes.
That is what God has done with some
of you ungodly ones.
You are committed for trial at the day
of judgment.
The Lord lets you live, but you are
only out on bail and you will soon
have to appear before the great judge of
heaven and earth.
According to the revised version, and I think
that translation is correct, the punishment has begun
already.
The Lord knows how to go on, even
now, punishing the ungodly.
That unrest of theirs, those fears, those tremblings,
all show that God is dealing with them.
They swell themselves out very big, they laugh
with loud laughter, they deny the truth, and
they scoff at Christ.
But believe me, dear friends, you need not
wish to be like them, no, not even
like the healthiest and the wealthiest and the
proudest and the greatest of them.
The Lord knows how, even now, to smite
them, and he does smite them.
The life of an ungodly man, at its
best, is a horrible life.
I would sooner be God's dog than the
devil's darling.
It is better to be the most weeping
Jeremiah than the most boastful Pharaoh.
The day will come when the ungodly will
themselves see it to be so, and the
proudest tyrant will envy the meanest man or
woman who crept humbly to the mercy seat
and cried, God, be merciful to me, a
sinner.
The Lord knows how to deal with the
unjust, even now, and he will know how
to deal with them by and by.
O sirs, these are no trifling matters of
which I am speaking.
The unjust may be in the fullness of
their strength, but the Lord can bring them
down to lie on a sickbed.
Even there they may defy God, but he
knows how to stop their impious mouths.
Ah, saith he, and that is an awful
text, I will ease me of mine adversaries
and avenge me of mine enemies, as if
they vexed and plagued his Holy Spirit.
At last he said, I will be rid
of them.
They shall not trouble me any longer.
I will ease me of mine adversaries.
Then he sends the reaper whose name is
Death.
I think that I meet him now, swinging
his sharp sickle, and I say to him,
Whither away, O Death?
What art thou about to do?
Wilt thou dare destroy that scarlet poppy blazing
in the midst of the growing corn?
Ah, saith he, one touch of my sickle
will bring it down.
And that blue flower yonder, in all its
splendid majesty of beauty, ah, saith he, I
will lay that low with all the common
grasses of the field.
The Lord knoweth how to deal with the
unjust in the next world as well as
in this.
O, that dreadful thought!
Trouble not yourselves about it, except to flee
from the wrath to come.
Raise no perplexing questions in your mind.
The Lord knoweth how to deal with the
unjust in the world to come, and that
dealing shall be according to the strictest rule
of justice.
The judge of all the earth shall do
right.
Men shall not be able to accuse him
of injustice.
He will deal with them as the God
who cannot err.
They are in his hands, and it is
a fearful thing to fall into the hands
of the living God.
Do not believe those who tell you that
it is not.
They are the servants of the devil, be
they who they may, who seek to delude
your souls upon this matter.
I beseech you, escape for your lives.
Look not behind you.
Stay not in all the plain, but escape
to the cross of Christ, for there and
there only is their salvation for the unrighteous.
O, seek it now for Jesus' sake.
I close with an illustration of the text,
which I feel almost certain was in the
mind of Peter when he wrote these words.
The Lord knoweth how to deliver thee godly
out of temptations and preserve the unjust until
the day of judgment to be punished.
Turn to the twelfth chapter of the Acts
of the Apostles, where you have the record
of Peter lying asleep in the prison, watched
by soldiers.
And yet, at dead of night, the angel
of the Lord came into the prison, smote
Peter on the side, bade him bind on
his sandals and gird himself and follow him.
Peter went through all the doors of the
prison until he came to the great iron
gate, and that opened of its own accord.
And there stood Peter out in the street
in answer to the prayers made at the
prayer meeting at Mrs. Mark's house, where the
Christians in Jerusalem were gathered that night to
pray for him.
This miracle proves that the Lord knew how
to deliver the godly out of trial.
Read the rest of the chapter, please, for
that takes in the other half of my
text.
Herod sat upon his throne of state, and
all the people were paying him homage.
And when he made an oration from his
golden throne, they shouted, It is the voice
of a god and not of a man.
That same god, who had delivered Peter, knew
how to lay hold of Herod.
For we are told that immediately the angel
of the Lord smote him, and he was
eaten of worms and gave up the ghost.
The first is a brilliant deed of an
infinitely wise grace.
The next is an astounding deed of an
infinitely wise justice.
It does not need that you go to
the gallows to meet your doom.
A few worms can destroy you.
It does not need that you be killed
in a great railway accident, or that there
be a collision at sea, or that you
fall on the field of battle.
Herod was eaten of worms.
A grapestone has before now choked and killed
a man.
A drop of water has been poisonous to
another.
A little gas that was almost impalpable has
laid another in his grave.
There is not one of you ungodly ones
who can escape if God shall say to
his angels, Smite that man while he sits
in his pew.
He has resisted my mercy and rejected my
love.
He will not come to Christ.
You too may be eaten of worms ere
another Sunday comes.
God grant that you may not meet such
a fate, but may you learn the lesson
of this text and feel the force and
power of it in your own souls.
For Jesus Christ's sake.
Amen.