Outline 25.

1. Young sinners. - Prepare. It cannot be too soon. “Remember thy Creator,” &c.

2. Busy worldlings. - Your field, house, rent, is prepared. Is your soul so? If you had a cause to be tried, you would prepare.

3. Old people. - Your hoary heads and wrinkled foreheads show that death comes. Your body is preparing for the tomb. Is your soul ready for God? End your follies with the year.

4. Relatives. - Prepare. The call is to all, doubly to you. O seek manger, look at Christ’s tomb, - though this by faith. Mix your souls with Jesus, as you will mix your dust with——

OUTLINE 25.

“If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema, maranatha,” 1 Corinthians 16:22.

INTRODUCTION. - Devoted to destruction, execrable.

I. The Lord Jesus is infinitely worthy of our love.

If supreme beauty demands love, Christ does. All beauty his. If goodness in creatures, Christ hath more.

If love demands love. Behold what love. Helen, Rachel. Name is Jacob. If kindness, presents for body and soul, letters, messengers, parting with his glory, assuming our nature, confined for our crimes, leaping into the sea of to save us, drinking the cup of death to make us live, pleading our cause, he wept for Lazarus, he bleeds and dies for us.

This is heightened by the consideration of our unworthiness, our wretchedness, guilt, pollution, baseness.

II. Some do not love the Lord Jesus.

1. They will not have that Lord to reign over them.

2. They love him not as a Saviour from sin.

3. They love him not as a Christian prophet. They love not to think, talk of, or converse with him. They slight his letters, messengers, members, saints, doctrines, commands, and pledges of dying love.

III. Not to love Christ is a detestable and destructive sin. It makes is execrable, accursed, maranatha.

1. It is the highest ingratitude. The basest of sins;

2. It attacks the blessed trinity God so loved. Lovest thou me? The Spirit makes us understand the length, breadth, &c.

3. Sin worse than that of Adam, Capernaum, Sodom.

4. Worse than the sin of the scribes. We reject a glorious Redeemer.

5. Worse than murder, &c. He is our lawgiver, Redeemer.

6. It spoils all duties and works. Give me thy heart.

7. It breaks the whole law at once.

8. It unfits for heavenly love. Fits for hell, unbelief. APPLICATION. - Lovers of the world - Ye are adulterers: the love of the Son is not in you. You are dead. Your object will fail you. As vou would not forfeit a double heaven, get Christ’s love. Pray for Christ’s love, for the Holy Spirit, and a new heart. Sin not against so much love, and against your interest, duty. Come, and taste how loving, how good Christ is. Mourners. - “We love him, because he first loved us.” Believe, view, remember his love. “Blessed are the mourners.”

Backsliders. - Peter.

Believers. - Show, grow, walk in love, blessed.

“Any man. - Maranatha!”

OUTLINE 26.

“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life,” John 3:14, 15. INTRODUCTION. - Law our school master to bring Us to Christ. Moses. I. Deadly nature of sin.

Like a fiery serpent. - Act, like the sting, bite. In its guilt, like the venom infecting. In its consequence, pain, death, Proverbs 23:32. Approaches as a serpent. It stupifies, or makes raging. One serpent killed man with one bite.

II. Powerful remedy prepared.

“The Son of man lifted up,” - as brass, bright, durable. Serpent in the likeness of - Christ in the likeness of sinful flesh, without sin. Serpent accursed, - Christ was made a curse. Lifted up on the cross, to heaven. On the Gospel pole. Christ is the Physician and remedy. He is the Judge, and goes through the execution.

III. Way to apply the remedy.

Not by works. (These remedies are preparations of our own. Formalists, moralists.) But, by looking to Christ, Isaiah 45:22; 2 Corinthians 4. till the sting is extracted, the soul is pardoned and healed. Behold Christ at the door, in the garden, on the cross. Your sin fastened on him. The serpent bruised his heel. His Godhead, unbruised, raises him. See him pleading your cause. I bring the pole near. Look and be saved. Look steadily through all clouds. In faith, in hope, in love, with detestation of sin. IV. Encouragement to believe.

Christ lifted up for this end,

1. “That they might not perish.” In sin, death, hell, everlasting destruction.

2. “But might have everlasting life,” health, life of grace, and glory for ever.

3. This is fulness of salvation. The freeness, “Whosoever believeth on him,” &c.

APPLICATION. -

Careless sinners. - Is sin so terrible? Play not; trifle not with it; rest not with its sting; plead not for its life; put not off its cure; misery of sinners here, and in hell; gnawn by serpents, envy, rage, disappointment, worm.