A Sermon by William Wilson
Luke 10:13-16. Woe unto thee, Chorazin! Woe unto thee, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works had been done in Tyre and Sidon, which have been done in you, they had a great while ago repented, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. But it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgement, than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted to heaven, shalt be thrust down to hell. He that heareth you, heareth Me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth Me; and he that despiseth Me, despiseth Him that sent Me.
To confirm the faith of the seventy disciples, and to prepare them more perfectly for the reception they were to experience from the people, Jesus told them that it would be more tolerable for Sodom than for the city which would reject their message. He immediately proceeded to declare that it would be the same for those towns in which He had been Himself, where He had done His mighty works. In whatever light the people might regard it, the proclamation among them of the glad tidings of peace was most solemnly important, both to those who received them and to those who rejected them. This had already proved to be the case in those towns on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus had so often gone and which He had now abandoned for ever. For them there was no future restoration, no new period of merciful visitation. In the purpose of God they were already numbered among the things that had been.
The towns of Galilee. The prophets had of old denounced cities such as Tyre and Sidon as having filled up the measure of their iniquities, and in the just judgment of God they had been brought down from their place of pride and levelled with the dust. The fate of these cities was an imperfect pattern of the more sweeping desolation that was to come upon these towns of Galilee: Bethsaida, Chorazin and Capernaum. The traveller now seeks in vain for the localities where they once were. And the physical desolation with which they have been visited, how imperfectly does it shadow forth the more terrible doom which has overtaken their guilty inhabitants, to whom the Lord had spoken in the tenderest love?
But they did not hear; and now He prophesied of woe. He did not speak the language of peace but of denunciation. Now, from the borders of Samaria, He sent back to these cities this voice, which was the herald of judgement without mercy. His voice was no more to be heard in their streets. His gracious work among them had come to an end. His face, for the last time,
1Taken, with editing, from the preacher’s Christ Setting His Face Towards Jerusalem; the headings have been added. Wilson (1808-88) was a Free Church minister in Dundee.
was turned toward Jerusalem, and His last words to them were those of woe. His presence and work in these cities had not, for the most part, done good; although here and there He had snatched a soul from the jaws of destruction and made manifest His power to save.
A woe is pronounced. As communities, they had not known the time of their merciful visitation, and already it had passed away. They had not repented in sackcloth and ashes, in the presence of the divine majesty which had been revealed to them; and now Jesus said, Woe unto you! What took place among you appeared to you to be only child’s play – at most a matter for passing wonder and curiosity, or for quibbling and fault-finding. It was really the most serious thing with which you ever had to do. Your future destiny as individuals and as communities were involved in it. You were proud of heart when you should have been humbled; self-righteous when you should have abhorred yourselves; fault-finding when you should have been docile, amusing yourselves with mere forms and shadows when it obliged you to be most deeply in earnest.
Woe to you! You found it so easy to close your hearts against that gentle voice of gracious wisdom; it did not strive nor cry; it wooed you in infinite tenderness and love; it called and warned you with the sweet sound of a silver trumpet. It was, notwithstanding, an awful voice to you. It was a voice which was awakening the echoes of the last trumpet, and was sealing your doom for ever. Woe to you, blind, hard of heart, given up to hopeless impenitence – who have not known the time nor the nature of your visitation, nor the profound meaning of those great events which took place in the midst of you; who did not see the grace and truth which were in Jesus Christ; who did not listen to the voice of your only deliverer; who, on the contrary, have been loading Him with accusations; who have pitilessly refused Him access to your hearts; who have taken Satan’s part against Him and entered into a common league with the wicked one! You have already proved yourselves to be ripe for the everlasting companionship of the devil and his angels.
The individual towns. Woe to thee, Chorazin, whose inhabitants have seen the power and heard the wisdom of the Son of God! To them the manifestation of that power has been a matter only of idle wonder, and to them His wisdom has appeared to be foolishness. You have chosen your part and must abide by your choice. You have refused to become the friends of God and He must deal with you as His enemies. You might have had pardon, and peace but, having rejected them, you are under the curse. The alternative has been presented to you, and you have preferred the darkness to the light. You have chosen war rather than peace. To you therefore there is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever.
Woe to you, Bethsaida! You have been greatly favoured, and your name might have been for ever a theme of praise. You were the birthplace and home of Andrew, Peter and Philip. The Lord gathered them from among you as brands plucked from the burning. You have beheld the marvellous transformation that was wrought on them. You have been privileged to see simple, wicked men made wise with the wisdom of God and visibly transformed before you into patterns and teachers of men. The kingdom of God has come nigh to you, and you have thrust it far away and have taken up arms against it. These ransomed souls have uttered in vain to you their silent, yet most emphatic testimony.
And there must be a deeper aggravation in your condemnation, Capernaum, which have been exalted to heaven. Yours is as the guilt of Jerusalem; and yours also must be its punishment. Your privileges have been greater than those of any of the towns of Galilee, and your plagues therefore will be “wonderful” (see Deut 28:59). You have been called Christ’s own city, so long has He dwelt within your borders, and so often has He taught in your streets. Every spot within your walls has been made hallowed ground, and every spot has become a desecrated temple. You were the chosen field of the Lord’s ministry, when He was constrained to flee from Nazareth and left it to its hopeless destiny, as if there He had sought an asylum for the truth, which the Nazarenes had driven forth from their borders.
His footsteps have often pressed the shore beside you, as He landed from his journeys across the Sea of Galilee. On that shore was witnessed the miraculous draught of fishes which was the instrument of making Peter and Andrew, and James and John fishers of men. It was in your synagogue that even a demoniac bore witness to the presence of the Son of God, and Satan himself owned the supremacy of Jesus and yielded to His power. Within your borders, on one day, multitudes were healed of every kind of desperate disease. In you a helpless paralytic was raised from his bed and walked about in renewed strength. From the place of the receipt of custom in you, Matthew was called to the noblest of all offices. In your synagogue, in the presence of the assembled people, a man stretched out his withered arm at the bidding of the Lord. Your streets have echoed to the sound of the most wonderful sermon that was ever heard. In your garrison a heathen centurion recognised the Divine majesty of Jesus and exercised a faith which should have been a pattern to all the house of Israel.
You have indeed been exalted to heaven. Your privileges have been manifold and unprecedented. The Lord has recorded His name in you, and made you a sacred city. His glory has shone upon you from above the mercy seat. And yet you have not worshipped before Him. Yours must therefore be the
lowest place, because it has been the highest. Your degradation will be as great as your elevation has been. Yours shall be the destiny of Satan, for your rebellion has been as his was. He was hurled from heaven down to the lowest hell for his rebellion, and there is no future deliverance for him. You shall be cast down to the same depth. The privileges you have abused and the opportunities you have neglected will sting you with unavailing and ceaseless regret. The hand that was stretched forth to save you will be found equally strong to smite. God’s jealousy of His love being despised and rejected will kindle into the fire of hell.
Dundee. If all this was true of them, what shall be said of us? What end awaits us? For Jesus said with equal emphasis and truth: “He that heareth you heareth Me; and he that despiseth you despiseth Me, and he that despiseth Me despiseth him that sent Me”. The voice of Jesus, in His garb of humiliation, should have been as powerful as when His word was spoken amid the thunders of Sinai. And that word, spoken by the least of His servants and messengers now, is as influential to save or to destroy as when Jesus uttered it personally in the streets of Capernaum, or on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. It is the truth spoken which proves and judges, and not the person who utters it. Has Jesus not, by that word, been present in the midst of us as He was in Galilee in the days of old? Have our privileges not been even greater than those of Capernaum? Has He not been displaying among us all the treasures of His grace? Has He not been speaking to us, as He speaks in His Word, with infinite tenderness and beseeching love, entreating and warning us with an earnestness that is appropriate to the things of eternity?
His kind works, and His wise and loving utterances, have been made known before our eyes. In this town also, as in Bethsaida and in Capernaum of old, have been witnessed those acts of transforming power by which the vile have been made noble, and the foolish made wise. Here there has been, as there was in those towns, a time of most merciful visitation. Can this time be gone for ever? This was the first town in Scotland that unfurled the banner of the Reformation. It was here that George Wishart preached and, in a later day, the godly and fervent John Willison; and, in our own day, it has been the scene of a wonderful revival. What has come of it all? Where are we now? “Whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him.”
There is nothing which gives such force and significance to the word of Christ – nothing which so increases the responsibility of those who hear it – as a manifest conversion, a sinner being brought from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God. The gospel has been among us, with the same manifest tokens of Divine power as were seen in Capernaum. Is the
destiny of its inhabitants to be ours also? Have we become so wearied of the gentle and loving voice of Jesus that, from henceforth, He will be constrained to speak to us in the wailing tones of woe? Now it is high time for us to awake out of sleep – to mark with heedful eye what is taking place around us and to ascertain our whereabouts.
The effects on us of preaching. What has been the effect on us personally of all this gracious ministry – of these miracles of mercy that have been wrought among us, of the earnest beseeching cry from heaven which has been so long sounding in our ears? Is it really a voice from heaven that we have been hearing? Whose are these ordinances that we observe, and whose is this Word? If it is not a delusion and a lie to say that they are God’s and that God is dealing with us by them, then they are the most serious things we can possibly have to do with; the most marvellous and grandest in their nature, and the most important in their results. If this word is the Word of God – if He is speaking to us in it – is it not the most marvellous condescension and mercy on His part? Must there not be some fearful mistake on our part, if we think that we can do without it, or that we can afford to despise it?
If He who is our Creator and Judge knows that we need salvation, and has brought it thus nigh to us and offered it freely, surely it must be a fatal error to assume that we do not need it, or at least that we do not need it now. He knows where we are going, and what is to be the end of our course; and He never sends us a message too early. “Today, if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts.” Are you wiser or more powerful than He is? Can you avert His judgement when it comes? When He invites you, can it be safe to refuse? When He draws near, can it be safe to close the door against Him? It is with Him that you really have to do – not merely with me, and these outward ordinances. You are not dealing with mere dreams and speculations. You are not hearing a voice whose echoes only serve to induce a deeper slumber of the soul. The Lord is here, in that Word through which He speaks to you and warns you. Will you dare to turn your back on Him and say, I will have nothing to do with Thee?
Warnings. The trumpet of woe has already been raised to His lips. Do not let its tones of despair be heard, pronouncing your doom. Rather turn your eye, and look on the face of that meek Lamb of God, Immanuel, in whom is the fullness of the Godhead. Picture Him to your minds as He is described in this Word of His, which endures for ever. What depth of patient love there is in His eye, what tenderness in the tones of His voice, what eloquence of passionate earnestness as He stands between you and the gates of hell, entreating you to turn back! What power there is in that arm outstretched to save and what willingness to save to the uttermost, what grace has been poured
upon His lips and what patience is stamped on that sorrowing, pitying countenance! Has He not for days and years been standing near you, restraining you from rushing upon inevitable perdition? Can you think that, after all, there is no real danger, that He has been imposing upon your fears and seeking to awaken them without cause? Can you believe that the danger is not imminent, when He has come from heaven to shield you against it?
If so, you must believe Him to be a blasphemers and a liar. I beseech you to cast off the delusion that you are dealing here with mere forms and words, and to lay to heart that it is the Lord who is here dealing with you, that He is speaking to you as really as He spoke in Capernaum, and that His word is as full of everlasting issues. It is with the Lord that you have to do here – even the Lord who, if you will not hear Him and lay His word to heart, will surely send a curse upon you.
Jesus baptized the apostle of love with the name, Son of Thunder. Nor was the name inappropriately bestowed, for there is something terrible in love. It is the most majestic and far-reaching of all emotions. It has a double voice – gentle as a breeze at evening, and loud and impetuous as the thunder. It lies at the root of the fiercest and most destructive resentments. And the wrath of the Lamb is the most terrible thing in the universe. When we look back on the past and contemplate the man Christ Jesus, trace His footsteps and listen to His voice, is there not something awful in the fact that His voice has this double key? “Come unto Me,” He says, “all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” And He says, “Woe unto thee, Chorazin! Woe unto thee, Bethsaida!” Alas, how infinite must have been the provocation which resulted in this change of tone! But the provocation was given, and the judgement did not tarry.
Now He is the same yesterday, today and for ever. He will not always strive with your unbelief. His word today is, Come; but His next word to you may be, Woe unto you! “Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded . . . I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh.” “Consider this, ye that forget God.” There is nothing incongruous or inconsistent in the fact that your rejection of His message of love and mercy should be the herald of unparalleled judgement. For in such rejection there is not only the deepest guilt, but it inevitably has a most hardening and corrupting influence. It is to prefer the false to the true, darkness to light, Satan to God. It is deliberately to renounce all that is redeeming in love and mercy, and to ripen the soul for an undone eternity. Take heed then what you do. “See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh.” “Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and ye perish from the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little.”
What does the attitude of Jesus towards you now mean, and His gracious intervention? It means that you are doomed to perish, that you are children of wrath. If it was not so, His whole work and word would not be relevant. The revelation of the Saviour is the surest and the most emphatic proof of the estimate which God has of your state. Do you adopt that estimate as your own and believe that you are under condemnation and need to be saved?
Alas, the secret of your indifference, just as in Galilee of old, lies here. You believe, as Eve did, the deceitful word of Satan, when he whispered in her ear, “Ye shall not surely die”. But to believe that lie, although it may at first appear to be comforting, involves terrible consequences. It implies the abolition of God’s law, the dethronement of justice, and the everlasting dominion of sin. It leaves you without a tribunal to which to make an appeal, and without a God to rectify the fearful wrongs that oppress and torture humanity. To believe a lie is always a deadly thing. To believe this lie is most fatal of all. There is a righteous God and an unchangeable law. And as surely as that is so, you are under the curse of that law. Is it safe for you to remain in that position? No, is it not the maddest infatuation to prefer God’s wrath to His love, and woe to peace? You cannot escape from being under His government. You cannot evade His judgement.
The call for repentance. Is it not best then to come to a reckoning with Him now? What does His Word demand of you? It is repentance – that you turn from sin to God. When Jonah was sent to Nineveh to save it from destruction, his message to the people was, Repent. When John the Baptist preached to the multitudes who sought him in the wilderness, he had the same message to deliver. This also was the message which Jesus delivered. Everywhere he called men to repentance. “If the mighty works had been done in Tyre and Sidon, which have been done in you,” He said, “they had a great while ago repented, sitting in sackcloth and ashes.”
Repentance then is your first and great business. It constitutes the very evil and danger of your condition that you have loved sin and have forsaken God. Your only safety lies in loving God and forsaking sin. Your greatest sin, and the root of all the rest, is forsaking God. He is the only good; and all goodness is in fellowship with Him. Without that fellowship you become the prey of all wickedness and delusion. And herein is manifested the grace of the gospel. It is not merely a gracious saying, “Return, ye backsliding children”. It is a word in the hands of a Mediator, who comes to restore the fellowship which we had lost; who is a daysman between us and God, able to lay His hand upon us both. In Christ, God has already united Himself with manhood, and in man’s nature He is commanding and entreating you to come to Him. He proclaims to you that He has taken the curse upon Himself and made
peace by the blood of His cross. And He stretches forth His hand to draw you within the embrace of the Father. If you lay hold on that outstretched hand, you find a reconciled God, and for you there is no more curse or death.
The effectiveness of the gospel. Dare you refuse this offered grace? Alas, we need not put the question. The cities of Galilee refused Jesus Himself, although He spoke to them as “never man spake”, and entreated them to come to Him. We know, when we now speak in His name, that there are many who will refuse, who will cleave to their sin till it destroys them, who so hate God that they will not accept His grace. In spite of all argument and demonstration, they will remain uninfluenced. It is now as it was of old. There is something terribly humbling and alarming in Christ’s ministry, when we consider its lack of success. If He could not persuade men, who is there that can? What hope then is there in this work of ours, and what possibility of success? None other surely than that which the prophet had when he was sent to preach to the dry bones. And yet his was a very successful mission. At his word there rose up an exceeding great army of living souls, for the breath of the Lord passed upon the ghastly skeletons.
Out of these doomed cities of Galilee also, Jesus gathered the precious firstfruits of a glorious harvest. He who sends us with His message does not send us on our own charges. With Him is sovereign and resistless power, and He will be glorified in the salvation of sinners. Christ shall see His seed, and shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand. By His knowledge He shall justify many. Come then from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain. Let Jesus see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied. Even when the trumpet of woe is being sounded, let these anticipate the coming doom, and hear His voice and live.
David Ross (5)1
Rev Ewen MacQueen
Years have now elapsed since what was written on David Ross appeared in The Free Presbyterian Magazine but this is not due to lack of desire to complete the narrative; yet as the old saying puts it, the lame horse will eventually reach the mill. We hope the Creator will give us this further opportunity to place on record the life of David Ross as we knew him in his last days on earth.
1This article completes a translation, by Rev John MacLeod, of an account of the life of David Ross, Dornoch. This final article originally appeared, in Gaelic, in volume 23 of The Free Presbyterian Magazine.
We previously mentioned that his natural eyesight failed years before his end. But although the eyes in his head failed, the light that the Holy Spirit placed in his soul did not fail. The nearer he came to the end, the more his godliness became apparent. There was not a day or a night that he was not thinking and speaking of Christ and of that home prepared in heaven, and it was evident to everyone that his concern for the cause of God was growing daily. The ministry of the Church was increasingly a concern to him every day. He was wont to say that if there was even one among them that was not faithful, there was the danger that he would take them aside from following and defending God’s cause on earth. It would be an injustice to his memory to withhold what he said to me when some ministers departed from the foundation that the divines contended for at the time of the Reformation. We were going together to a catechising meeting at Altnabathaich and on the way he turned to me and said, “What is your opinion of those that left us?” To this I answered: “I do not like to say much about them”.
David replied, “I believe that, but we cannot but be thinking of their action. I was sitting at the fire in my own house one or two nights ago and a verse of God’s Word came to me: and this is the verse: ‘He that diggeth a pit shall fall into it; and whoso breaketh an hedge, a serpent shall bite him’. Because of my blindness I could not see where it was written, but it was found for me. It was in connection with those that left us that these words came to me and I began to consider what the hedge was that they had broken. They broke the unity of the Church they were in, without cause; they broke the vows which they came under and it is my opinion that, if the Lord’s portion is in them, the serpent of a guilty conscience will bite them before they leave this world and, if not, it will be the worse for them – they will be bitten in eternity. And if I went to Edinburgh or to any other place where any one of them is, I would prefer to listen to one of those who did not take the step that they took than to go to listen to one of them.”
No one that knew him could charge him with speaking hastily; he would not give utterance to anything that he had not given careful consideration to beforehand and it was evident to the day of his death that his attachment to the truth of God was greater than to any creature of his acquaintance under the sun.
His ability to converse was not much impaired before his death, but the outward man was failing, as he would say himself: “The Creator was kind to me: He keeps the doors open. But as He takes away my strength, He takes away my appetite for bodily sustenance.” We used to go and see him twice a day when he lost his ability to go to the house of God. We always found him meditating on the truth. There was a young girl in the family where he
lived and he would ask her to sing when the others would be away attending the public means of grace.
Over the last few weeks of his life on earth it was indeed edifying to be beside him. Always in his prayer there was discerned a longing to be home. Often he was heard saying, “Beloved, wilt Thou not come”. Now and again he would say, “Are you there?” And when we said we were, then he would say, “Have you ever known one who has waited as long as I have for the post to come?” It was said to him at some hour, “It will not be long, David, until you will be taken home”. To which he replied, “O, great is my fear! But the Almighty was good to me throughout my day and my hope is that He will not now forsake me.” When someone would come in to whom he was not close and he was told that such a person was present, he would say, “There was a day when there were many with whom I had more of a bond, but now I like to meet those with whom I have had less of a bond”.
He himself would quote from the chapter that he desired to be read to him and often he would name the book and the chapter. One particular day when we went into his room he cried, “Are you there?” And when we said that we were, he gave utterance to these words: “A certain portion is before me and if only I had light on it! You will find the word before me in Revelation and the fourth verse”. I understood that it was the first chapter of Revelation that he meant and because of his impaired hearing I put off my shoes and lying on the bed behind him, we read the portion to him. When we came to the end of the fifth verse and we read these words to him, “Unto Him that loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood”, he lifted up his two hands, his countenance lit up and he began to preach, and in our opinion it would be good if preachers of the highest order would have the view of the glory of Christ’s Person and His finished work that this holy warrior had lying on his back, battling with death; that death which for him was without sting – through faith in the Captain of salvation, who was made perfect through suffering.
From that time until his soul parted from his body, he remained in this wonderful frame of mind. The saints that had gone to their heavenly home were before his mind, and in accordance with the custom in Sutherland at funerals, and over which David himself often presided, he would call upon people to pray until the body would be carried away. “Angus Gray from Lairg”, he said, “you will lead in prayer”, and when he received no answer he said, “Is he there?” When it was said to him that he was not there, he answered, “The end came so suddenly that the people were not aware of it”.
He remained in this heavenly frame of mind until the Most High, who graciously rules, removed his soul from its clay tabernacle. This is how David
Ross came to his end. This is how that “noble youth”, as his friend Angus Murray used to describe him, finished his journey on earth. In bringing this account of it to an end, it is not excessive to say: he was comely in countenance; wise and holy in conversation, savoury in his walk, looking up to the Son of God.
It would be good for the Church in her courts that the Lord would yet raise up those to whom we may look for guidance in the way of truth until the end of our course in this world, without giving offence to men, without harming the Word of God – to be as David was in his day, who brought to task those that erred, encouraged the sheep of the flock that were heavy with young, tender-hearted towards the lambs and a careful drover of those that were heavy with young. The lamb would receive his portion of milk, the sheep would receive portions of truth coming out of his mouth: O young beloved children, seek [the Lord], as David Ross did when a boy, while watching over the flock. The question, “Whose are you?” was to have a long-lasting effect on him and, to the end of his life, he remained of unblemished character. And if the young of the country where he was for a season valued the truth, it would cleanse them from the loathsome disease of sin that cleaves to us and which shall bring punishment at last if we are not cleansed from its guilt and pollution, in the fountain opened in the Person of the Son of God.
Many a day we were happy in the company of David and Angus, but now, since they departed, our thoughts follow them. If God spares us, our expectation is to produce a book which will place on record the lives of David and Angus; that is, if the world would give me the opportunity which I do not now have. Although I do not regard myself able or worthy to place on record the words and works of these men, they are worthy of being remembered and being found among those of whom it may be said that “the righteous man’s memorial shall everlasting prove”.