The vision that he seeth is for many days to come, and he prophesieth of the times that are far off.
Now
(a sermon for young men and young women):--One would have thought that if the glorious Lord condescended to send His servants to speak to men of the way of salvation, all mankind would delight to hear the message. But, alas! it has not been so. Man’s opposition to God is too deep, too stubborn for that. Men display great ingenuity in making excuses for rejecting the message of God’s love. The evil argument which is mentioned in the text has been used from Ezekiel’s day right down to the present moment, and it has served Satan’s turn in ten thousand cases. The sons of men, when they hear of the great atonement made upon the cross by the Lord Jesus, and are bidden to lay hold upon eternal life in Him, still say concerning the Gospel, “The vision that he seeth is for many days to come, and he prophesieth of times that are far off.” That is to say, they pretend that the matters whereof we speak are not of immediate importance, and may safely be postponed. They meet our pressing invitation, “All things are now ready, come ye to the supper,” with the reply, “Religion is meant to prepare us for eternity, but we are far off from it as yet, and are still in the hey-day of our being; there is plenty of time for those dreary preparations for death.” They put off the day of conversion, as if it were a day of tempest and terror, and not, as it really is, a day most calm, most bright, the bridal of the soul with heaven.
I. Granted for a moment that the message ww bring to you has most to do with the future state, yet even then the day is not far off, neither is there so great a distance between now and then, that you can afford to wait. You, perhaps, think seventy years a long period, but those who are seventy, in looking back, will tell you that their age is an hand’s breadth. Man is short-lived compared with his surroundings; he comes into the world and goes out of it, as a meteor flashes through yonder skies which have remained the same for ages. Look at yonder venerable oak, which has for five hundred years battled with the winds, and what an infant one seems when reclining beneath its shade! Stand by some giant rock, which has confronted the tempests of the ages, and you feel like the insect of an hour. Therefore do not say, “These things are for a far-off time”; for even if we could guarantee to you the whole length of human existence, it is but a span. But there comes upon the heels of this a reflection never to be forgotten--that not one man among us can promise himself, with anything like certainty, that he shall ever see threescore years and ten. Nay more, we cannot promise that we shall see half that length of time. Let me check myself! What am I talking of? You cannot be certain that you will see this year out, and hear the bells ring in a new year. Ay, and this very night, when you close your eyes and rest your head upon your pillow, reckon not too surely that you shall ever again look on that familiar chamber, or go forth from it to the pursuits of life. It is clear, then, that the things which make for your peace are not matters for a far-off time, the frailty of life makes them necessities of this very hour.
II. Our message really deals with the present. For observe, first, we are sent to plead with you, young men and young women, and tenderly to remind you that you are at this hour acting unjustly and unkindly towards your God. He made you, and you do not serve Him; He has kept you alive, and you are not obedient to Him, “Will a man rob God?” You would not rob your employer. You would not like to be thought unfaithful or dishonest towards man; and yet your God, your God, your God--is He to be treated so basely, notwithstanding all His goodness? Again, our message has to do with the present, for we would affectionately remind you that you are now at enmity with your best friend--the Friend to whose love you owe everything. I have to remind you, however, of much more than this, namely, that you are this night in danger. Are you content to abide for a single hour in peril of eternal punishment? Many other reasons tend to make this weighty matter exceedingly pressing; and among them is this, that there is a disease in your heart, the disease of sin, and it needs immediate cure. Surely a sick mar can never be cured too soon? The gospel which we preach to you will also bring you present blessings. In addition to present pardon and present justification, it will give you present regeneration, present adoption, present sanctification, present access to God, present peace through believing, and present help in time of trouble, and it will make you even for this life doubly happy. It will be wisdom for your way, strength for your conflict, and comfort for your sorrow.
III. I shall not deny, but I shall glory rather in admitting, that the Gospel has to do with the future. The Gospel of Jesus Christ has to do with the whole of a young man’s life. Dear young friends, if you are saved while yet you are young, you will find religion to be a great preventive of sin. What a blessing it is not to have been daubed with the slime of Sodom, never to have had our bones broken by actual vice. Prevention is better than cure, and grace gives both. Grace will also act as a preservative as well as a preventive. The good thing which God will put in you will keep you. Whosoever believeth in Him has passed from death unto life; he shall not live in sin, but he shall be preserved in holiness even to the end. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The far-off looks insignificant
“Look at the stars, those vast globes of light, by reason of the distance between us and them, do seem but as so many spangles; so we have but a weak sight of things which are set at a great distance, and their operation upon us is usually but small.”--Manton. A far-off hell is the dread of no man, and a far-off heaven is scarce desired by anyone. God Himself, while thought of as far away, is not feared or reverenced as He should be. If we did but use our thoughts upon the matter, we should soon see that a mere span of time divides us from the eternal world, while the Lord our God is nearer to us than our souls are to our bodies. Strange that the brief time which intervenes between us and eternity should appear to be so important, while eternity itself they regard as a trifling matter. Men use the microscope to magnify the small concerns of time. Oh, that they would use the telescope upon the vast matters of eternity! (C. H. Spurgeon.)
A common mistake and lame excuse
I. The saying of my text, in the application which I now want to make of it, is a truth, but it is only half a truth. The neglect of God’s solemn message by a great many people is based, more or less consciously, upon the notion that the message of Christianity--or, if you like to call it so, of the Gospel; or, if you like to call it more vaguely, religion--has to do mainly with blessings and woes beyond the grave. So there is plenty of time to attend to it when we get near the end. Now, is it true that “he prophesies of times that are far off”? Yes! and No! Yes! it is true, and it is the great glory of Christianity, that it shifts the centre of gravity, so to speak, from this poor, transient, contemptible present, and sets it away out yonder in an august and infinite future. But is that all that you have to say about Christianity? I want you to remember that all that prophesying of times that are far off has the closest bearing upon this transient, throbbing moment, because, for one thing, the characteristic of the Christian revelation about the future is that my eternity and yours is the child of time; and that just as the child is father of the man, so the man here is the progenitor and determiner of all the infinite spaces that lie beyond the grave. Therefore, when Christian truth prophesies of times that are afar off, it is prophesying of present time, between which and the most distant eternity there is an iron nexus: a band which cannot be broken. Igor is that all. Not only is the truth in my text but a half truth, if it is supposed that the main business of the Gospel is to talk to us about heaven and hell, and not about the earth by which we secure and procure the one or the other, but also it is a half truth, because, large and transcendent, eternal in their duration, and blessed beyond all thought in their sweetness as are the possibilities, the certainties that are opened by the risen and ascended Christ, and tremendous beyond all words that men can speak as are the alternative possibilities, yet these are not all the contents of the Gospel message; but those blessings and penalties, joys and miseries, exaltations and degradations, which attend upon righteousness and sin, godliness and irreligion today are a large part of its theme and of its effects.
II. So, then, my text gives a very good reason for prizing and attending to the prophecy. People do not usually kick over their telescopes and neglect to look through them, because they are so powerful that they show them the craters in the moon and turn faint specks into blazing suns. People do not usually neglect a word of warning or guidance in reference to the ordering of their earthly lives, because it is so comprehensive, and covers so large a ground, and is so certain and absolutely true. Surely there can be no greater sign of Divine loving kindness, of a Saviour’s tenderness and care for us, than that He should come to each of us, as He does come, and say to each of us, “Thou art to live forever; and if thou wilt take Me for thy light thou shalt live forever, blessed, calm, and pure.” And we listen, and say, “He prophesies of times that are far off.” Oh! is that not rather a reason for coming very close to, and for grappling to our hearts, and living always by the power of, that great revelation? Surely to announce the consequences of evil, and to announce them so long beforehand that there is plenty of time to avoid them, and to falsify the prediction, is the token of love.
III. It is a very common and a very bad reason for neglecting. It does operate as a reason for giving little heed to the prophet, as I have been saying. In the old men-of-war, when an engagement was impending, they used to bring up the hammocks from the bunks and stick them into the nettings at the side of the ship, to defend it from boarders and bullets. And then, after these had served the purpose of repelling, they were taken down again and the crew went to sleep upon them. That is exactly what some of my friends do with that misconception of the genius of Christianity, that it is concerned mainly with another world. They put it up as a screen between them and God, between them and what you know to be their duty--namely, the acceptance of Christ as their Saviour. It is your hammock that you put between the bullets and yourself; and many a good sleep you get upon it! Now, that strange capacity that men have of ignoring a certain future is seen at work all round about us in every region of life. The peasants on the slopes of Vesuvius live very merry lives, and they have their little vineyards and their olives. Yes, and every morning, when they come out, they can look up and see the thin wreath of smoke going up in the dazzling blue, and they know that some time or other there will he a roar and a rush, and down will come the lava. But “a short life and a merry one” is the creed of a good many of us, though we do not like to confess it. Some of you will remember the strange way in which ordinary habits survived in prisons in the dreadful times of the French Revolution, and how ladies and gentlemen, who were going to have their heads chopped off next morning, danced and flirted, and sat at entertainments, just as if there was no such thing in the world as the public prosecutor and the tumbril, and the gaoler going about with a bit of chalk to mark each door where the condemned were for next day. The same strange power of ignoring a known future, which works so widely and so disastrously round about us, is especially manifested in regard to religion. Surely it is not wise for a man to ignore a future that is certain simply because it is distant. So long as it is certain, what, in the name of common sense, has the time when it begins to be a present to do with our wisdom in regard to it? Surely it is not wise to ignore a future which is so incomparably greater than this present, and which also is so connected with this present as that life here is only intelligible as the vestibule and preparation for that great world beyond? Surely it is not wise to ignore a future because you fancy it is far away, when it may burst upon you at any time? What would you think of the crew and passengers of some ship lying in harbour, waiting for its sailing orders, who had got leave on shore, and did not know but that at any moment the blue peter might be flying at the fore--the signal to weigh anchor--if they behaved themselves in the port as if they were never going to embark, and made no preparations for the voyage? Let me beseech you to rid yourselves of that most unreasonable of all reasons for neglecting the Gospel, that its most solemn revelations refer to the eternity beyond the grave. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
God’s predictions will be fulfilled
Those who receive intelligence from the almanac that the tide is to turn at a given moment, never think of doubting the prediction. Those who read in the kindling page of night that an eclipse will occur at a particular moment are as sure of it as if it had already taken place. “On 9th August 1869,” says one, “at four o’clock in the afternoon, I stood at the door, smoked glass in hand, waiting. When a boy, I had read of this very eclipse, and of the moment when it should begin; it did begin at the precise second predicted forty years ago.” What we read in God’s own handwriting makes the student able to determine the path of the star, the point of an eclipse, to the fraction of a second; and is His word to be less trusted in the sphere of grace than in the sphere of nature’s operations? (R. Venting.).