NO ONE TO BLAME BUT THEMSELVES

NO ONE TO BLAME BUT THEMSELVES

"There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God." Heb 4:9

None but God's people shall enter into His rest He has prepared. This is still to be realized hereafter by the "some (who) must enter therein" (Heb 4:6), that is, "the people of God," the true Israel who shall enter into God's rest ("My rest," Heb 4:3). God's rest was a Sabbatism, a rest after days of labor. This is especially true of the 144,000 who choice this rest although many make a sorrowful choice. Though God's will is the first cause of all things, yet all the fault lies in the sinners themselves. Their consciences shall one day tell them that they might have been saved, if they would; and that it was their own willful refusal, which shut them out. God freely offered them life, and they would not accept it on his easy and reasonable conditions. They perish, because they would not be saved in God's way. The pleasures of the flesh seemed more desirable to them than the glory of the saints: Satan offered them the one, and God offered them the other, and they had free liberty to choose which they would choose; and they chose the pleasures of sin for a season, before the everlasting rest with Christ. And is it not a righteous thing that they should be denied that which they denied to accept? Even when God pressed them so earnestly, and persuaded them so persistently, and even implored them by His messengers, and charged His messengers to compel men by persistence, and taking no denial, to come in; and, yet, they would not; where should they be, but among the dogs without? Though man be so wicked, that he will not yield, till the mighty power of grace does prevail with him, yet, still we may truly say, that he may be saved, if he will, on God's terms. And his disability being moral, lying in willful wickedness, is no more excuse to him, than it is to a common adulterer, that he cannot love his own wife; or to a malicious person, that he cannot choose but to hate his brother: is he not so much the worse, and deserves so much the sorer punishment? As, therefore, I would have all sinners believe this, so I would advise all ministers more to preach it. Pry not too much into the depths of God's decrees. Regrettably! How little know we of far lower things! Lay all the blame on the wills of sinners; bend your words to persuade their wills. Is not that the business of our calling as well as that of the 144,000 messengers? Let me give you but one argument, which deserves to be considered. Sinners shall lay all the blame on their own wills in hell for ever. Hell is a rational torment by conscience, according to the nature of the rational subject. If sinners could but say, then, it was long of God, whose will did provoke me, and not of me, it would quiet their consciences, and ease their torment, and make hell to be no hell to themselves. But to remember their willfulness, will feed the fire, and cause the worm of conscience never to die.