Hebrews 3:7-8 Why (as the Holy Ghost said, To day if you will hear his voice,… I. THE EXCELLENCE OF RELIGION, AND YOUR INTEREST IN THE PRACTICE OF IT. Both these are indisputable. What do you set your thoughts on, when you take the affairs of religion under your consideration? Is it not the glory of God, and your own salvation from sin and wrath? Now what is so excellent in itself, so honourable, so suitable to the capacities of thinking beings, as these pursuits which form the nature of practical religion? II. THE UNCERTAINTY OF LIFE, AND TILE DANGER OF DYING UNPREPARED FOR ETERNITY. What is human life? A vapour, appearing a little while, and then vanishing. III. THE IMMUTABILITY OF GOD'S PRESENT DEMANDS. Whatever He requires of you now, He will require twenty or thirty years hence, should you live so long. The method of pardon is already fixed. The Unchangeable will never alter it. And if He will not, men cannot. If you dislike at present humiliation; if you feel now an aversion at a dependence on the Lord Jesus Christ for justification; if the duties of holiness seem hard and disagreeable at this instant, they will for ever be so, in relation to depraved dispositions. IV. THE LONGER IT IS DELAYED, YOUR AVERSION AND INABILITY TO IT WILL INCREASE. Was your life threatened with some distemper, how would you reason, and how would you act? Would you say, I will stay till I be a little worse, and then I will apply to a physician? Would it not be reckoned madness to sport in this manner with life and health? V. THE NECESSITY OF AN OPERATION OF DIVINE GRACE ON YOUR SOULS. God is now striving with you. But what if these are the last touches He will ever give a heart so long hardened against Him? (Alex. Shanks.) Parallel Verses KJV: Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, To day if ye will hear his voice,WEB: Therefore, even as the Holy Spirit says, "Today if you will hear his voice, |
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