“Confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.”—
HEB. xi. 13.
The world will hate you, and you will find that they will think that if they leave heaven with you, you ought to leave the earth with them, and thus you will find yourselves strangers. You will then believe you were created for eternity; you will pray and attend the means of grace as for eternity. It is not so much drinking, Sabbath-breaking, and such like that will bring sinners to hell, but their forgetfulness of God. And you that never felt your forgetfulness of heart a burden to you, the Spirit of God never planted a drop of grace in your soul. Nothing but the new nature will remember Him. Others, though engaged in the form of prayer, their thoughts are digging in the earth, or thinking of trash of one kind or another. Some of you will never think of death, judgment, or eternity, till the eternal flames be kindled about your ears and so disturb your peace. Poor creatures, how will you account for all your favours and privileges? Oh, you will say, “I do not trust to my own righteousness.” But do you think that the children of Christ are such dry, withered creatures as you? You are there that death is to you the end of your happiness. It would be a wonder to see a spiritually-minded, exercised Christian finding his joy in the sweet things of earth. You that are earthly and carnal during the week are like a beast, heavy and sleepy, on the Sabbath—concerned about back and belly. Oh, the poor creature would need to be plunged in the spirit of repentance on the Sabbath, when you would feel a new stream running from the bottom of your soul into eternity.
It is the Spirit of the Lord that will make you believe that you are “strangers and pilgrims.” You will see the fly come clean off the dunghill when the pig is rotting in it. This is the difference between the people of God and others in regard to the world. There are some persons that the cattle and sheep will be bleating in their ears in hell. You will see a man of tender conscience coming from the market as sober and fresh that he could engage in religious exercises as well as if he had come from the means of grace, when the natural man will return wallowing in drunkenness. There is not a hair that you are binding to the world but you are loosing from God. When are you nearest the bottomless pit? Is it not when God is not in all your thoughts? Some are living in hidden sins, and some of God’s people could name the persons, and yet these sins may not be publicly known till the day of judgment.