Ingratitude To God # 2

Ingratitude To God # 2

But if this does not suffice to make you sensible of your enormous guilt, let me lay before you an inventory of still richer blessings! At the head of this stands Jesus Christ, the unspeakable gift of God. "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish - but have everlasting life" (John 3:16). "God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world - but that the world through Him, might be saved" (John 3:17). The comforts of this life alone would be a very inadequate provision for creatures who are to exist forever in another world; for what are sixty or seventy years - in comparison to the long duration of an immortal being!

And the purposes for which he gave this gift, render it the more astonishing. He gave Him not only to rule us by His power - but to purchase us with the blood of His heart! Various means are appointed, and various endeavors are used - to save you, perishing sinners. For your salvation Jesus now intercedes in his native heaven, at the right hand of God. For your salvation the Holy Spirit strives with you; conscience admonishes you; providence draws by blessings, and drives you by chastisements; angels minister to you; Bibles are put into your hands; ministers persuade you; friends advise you; and thousands of saints pray for you. For this end, preaching, and a great variety of means of grace, are instituted.

And yet - hear, oh earth, with horror; be astonished, O heavens, at this: How little gratitude does God receive from our world after all! How little gratitude from you - on whom these favors are showered down with distinguished profusion! Do not many of you neglect the unspeakable gift of God, Jesus Christ, as well as that salvation which He bought with His blood? Oh, the mountainous load of ingratitude that lies upon you! It is enough to sink the whole world into the depth of hell!

God's love to you is an unbounded ocean, that spreads over eternity, and makes it, a it were, the channel of the ocean of your happiness. In you, He intends to show to all worlds what glorious creatures He can form of the dust, and of the polluted fragments of degenerate human nature. 

And now I am almost afraid to turn your thoughts to inquire - what return you have made for all these favors? I need not be particular. Your conscience accuses you, and points out the particulars; and I shall only join the cry of conscience against you. Oh! The ingratitude! Oh! the base, vile, unnatural, horrid, unprecedented ingratitude!

Let me now add a consideration, that gives an astonishing emphasis to all that has been said. All this profusion of mercy, personal and relative, temporal and spiritual - is bestowed upon creatures that deserve not the least mercy! Upon creatures that deserve to be stripped naked of every mercy; nay, that deserve to be made miserable in time and eternity! Upon creatures that are so far from deserving to be delivered from the  calamities of life - that they deserve to have them all heightened and multiplied, until they convey them to the more intolerable punishments of hell! Upon creatures that are so far from making adequate returns, that they are perpetually offending their God to His face; and every day receiving blessings from Him, and every day sinning against Him!

One prayer, and I am done. May our divine Benefactor, among his other blessings, bestow upon us that of a thankful heart, and enable us to give sincere, fervent, and perpetual praise to His name, through Jesus Christ, His unspeakable gift! Amen.

~Samuel Davies~

(The End)