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1993-03-15
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EXPOSITION.
They shall stand there to be judged, but not to be
acquitted. Fear shall lay hold upon them there; they shall not
stand their ground; they shall flee away; they shall not stand in
their own defence; for they shall blush and be covered with
eternal contempt.
Well may the saints long for heaven, for no evil men
shall dwell there, "_nor sinners in the congregation of the
righteous_." All our congregations upon earth are mixed. Every
Church has one devil in it. The tares grow in the same furrows as
the wheat. There is no floor which is as yet thoroughly purged
from chaff. Sinners mix with saints, as dross mingles with gold.
God's precious diamonds still lie in the same field with pebbles.
Righteous Lots are this side heaven continually vexed by the men
of Sodom. Let us rejoice then, that in "the general assembly and
church of the firstborn" above, there shall by no means be
admitted a single unrenewed soul. Sinners cannot live in heaven.
They would be out of their element. Sooner could a fish live upon
a tree than the wicked in Paradise. Heaven would be an
intolerable hell to an impenitent man, even if he could be
allowed to enter; but such a privilege shall never be granted to
the man who perseveres in his iniquities. May God grant that we
may have a name and a place in his courts above!
EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS
Verse 5.--"_Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the
judgment_," etc. And may not a reason also be conceived thus, why
the ungodly can never come to be of the congregation of the
righteous: the righteous go a way that God knows, and the wicked
go a way that God destroys; and seeing that these ways can never
meet, how should the men meet that go these ways? And to make
sure work that they shall never meet indeed, the prophet
expresseth the way of the righteous by the first link of the
chain of God's goodness, which is his _knowledge_; but expresseth
the way of the wicked by the last link of God's justice, which is
his _destroying_; and though God's justice and his mercy do often
meet, and are contiguous one to another, yet the first link of
his mercy and the last link of his justice can never meet, for it
never comes to destroying till God be heard to say _Nescio vos_,
"_I know you not_," and _nescio vos_ in God, and God's knowledge,
can certainly never possibly meet together.--^Sir Richard Baker.
Verse 5.--The Irish air will sooner brook a toad, or a
snake, than heaven a sinner.--^John Trapp.
HINTS TO PREACHERS.
Verse 5.--The sinner's double doom. 1. Condemned at the
judgment-bar. 2. Separated from the saints. Reasonableness of
these penalties, "therefore," and the way to escape them.
"_The congregation of the righteous_" viewed as the
church of the first-born above. This may furnish a noble topic.