Excuses Of Men
EXCUSES OF MEN
"And they all with one consent began to make excuse."--St. Luke, xiv., part of 18th verse.
We read in the 14th chapter of Luke that Christ is invited by one of the chief Pharisees to take supper with him on the Sabbath. I think by reading it carefully you will find it was a snare that the Pharisees were setting for Christ, that they were trying to get Him into some trouble, in order to get some reason that they might put Him out of the way. The law was that a man should not work on the Sabbath day, and the Pharisees were all the time bringing charges against Christ, because He was, as they said, working on the Sabbath! And so this Pharisee invited Him to his house, and there was a great company there. They had a certain man there who had the dropsy. Undoubtedly they had sent a servant out to get the man in so as to have him ready for the occasion. They had him sitting right opposite to Christ. Christ said to the Pharisees and the others sitting by, "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath day?" And there wouldn't one of them answer Him a word.
One after another, I can imagine, looked down, and it was as if they had said,
"Keep still now," and they held their peace. Christ said to the man who had the dropsy, "You may be healed," and the man got up and walked borne a perfectly sound man. Christ said to the Pharisees, "If any of you have an ass or an ox fallen into the pit, will you not straightway pull him out on the Sabbath day?" And they said not a word. They knew very well that if any of them had an ox or an ass fallen into the pit they would save him if it was on the Sabbath day. But they said nothing. They were all the time putting questions to Him; but see how Christ answered all these questions. It would be well for you to take your Bible and go through the Scriptures and see with what wisdom and tact those questions were answered that were put to Christ.
He said to the Pharisees gathered there - for he noticed that there was a great rush to see who was going to get the best seats. There they were pushing and elbowing each other back in order to get the best seats. Christ said, "Let me give you counsel. When you are invited to a feast take the lowest place. Do not be so ambitious to get the best place, to get to the head of the table; because if you get there, and a more honorable person comes, the head of the feast will make you sit further down, and you will be mortified and ashamed." Then He turned to the chief of the Pharisees who invited Him and said: "When you get up a feast, do not go and invite the rich, or you will be looking for them to invite you again." Isn't it the same thing to-day in the world? When people get up a feast, they invite the rich and influential, so by that means they will get into society, and their invitations will be returned. But, He said, go to the lame, the halt, the dumb, the blind, and ask them, and you will be well rewarded for what you do by our Father in Heaven. A man sitting at the table burst out and said, Blessed is the man that shall eat bread in the Kingdom of God." Then Christ said, "A certain man made a great supper and bade many;" here He described the great spiritual feast -" and sent his servant at supper time to say to them that were bidden, 'Come, for all things are now ready.' And they began to make excuses." They made excuse. They did not have any to offer without making them. "And they all with one consent began to make excuses." A man gets up a feast, and his friends make no excuses; but God gets up a feast, and not only prepares a table, but He goes forth and invites them all to come. They cannot go; they would like to go, they say, but cannot possibly, they have so much to do. Let me show you what these excuses are, and you will see on the face of them that they are downright lies. The Scripture says, "One after one they began to make excuses." If those, men had been invited to go out and walk, if they had been invited to go to a hospital to witness some terrible operation, or if they had been invited to an execution, they would have had some reason for giving excuses; but these men were invited to a royal feast. It is not often that common people like us get an invitation to a royal feast. If Queen Victoria were to invite us to a feast at Windsor Castle, do you suppose we would not regard it as a great honor? Do you suppose you would make excuses? O, my friends, I have an invitation to-day that is a thousand times beyond that. It is from the very King of Kings and Lord of Lords. It is the Marriage Supper of God's own Son. Blessed is he that shall be at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. He wants to see you all there. The invitation is to every one here. All are invited - the lowest, the highest, the richest, the poorest, all can come if they will.
Do you ever think what would take place in a city like New York if God should take men at their word when they make excuses, and should say to-night,
"Well, I will excuse you," and so, with one stroke of Providence should sweep them all away, and cease to care for those who refused Him? Why, the grass would right away begin to grow in your streets. There would be very few stores open to-morrow. Most of the merchants would want to be excused; their stores would be closed up, every solitary one of them. The rumsellers would all want to be excused. You cannot find a rumseller in all New York but wants to be excused. Every man that is carrying on a dishonest business would want to be excused. I do not think there would be any crowd here tomorrow, if that should take place in the next twenty-four hours. What desolation would reign in the streets of New York, and how many of all classes would make excuses! If I should step down from this place, and go right down the aisle among the audience, beginning with that little boy, and asking every one down the line, if you had not an excuse, how many of you would not have them? You would begin to find one before I got to you, and if you could not find one, you would make up one, and if you could not easily think of one, Satan would help you to get up one.
Let us take up the excuses of those three men mentioned here. The first man had bought some ground, and he must needs go and see it. Why didn't he see the ground before he bought it? If he had been a good businessman, he would have seen it first. If he had been, he would have been looking at the title. That would have been the better way. But he said he must go and see his ground. He had an invitation to the supper, and said, I would like to go, but I cannot." And he said to the servant, "Tell the Lord I would be delighted to be there. I do not know anything that would please me more than to go, but business is so pressing it will be utterly impossible for me to go." If the devil can only get us off into some cradle of excuses and rock us off to sleep, that is all he wants. If would have been better if this man had been honest and said to the servant, "Tell the Lord I don't want to go to the feast." It is better to be honest than to seek a refuge of lies and false excuses.
And the other man could not accept the invitation either I suppose he thought to himself, "How shall I get out of it?" So he said, "I have just bought five yoke of oxen. I will give them as my excuse." I suppose, perhaps he asked his wife,
"What shall I tell him?" Perhaps his wife told him, "Say you have just bought five yoke of oxen, and that you have to go and prove them." Now, why didn't he prove them before he bought them? And besides, did he not have plenty of time to prove them? It was not necessary for him to go Just at the hour of the feast to prove his oxen. He manufactured the excuse. The third man's excuse is more absurd, if possible, than the others. He said, "I have just married a wife." What difference did that make about his going? Why didn't he take his wife along? You can see that that excuse was a downright lie. So these three men made excuses, and when the messenger came back and gave them to the Lord, he said, "Not one of those that were bidden and have refused shall taste of my supper. Go and get the beggars from the highways and hedges, and the tramps and the poor, the lame, the maimed, the dumb, the blind, and if these men won't accept the invitation, let those who will, come. Let those that will accept of the invitation and press into the Kingdom. Thank God that His Gospel is for the poor as well as for the rich. If the rich won't have it, thank God that the poor are pressing into the Kingdom.
I want, to call your attention to the fact, that since these 1900 years have worn away, men are becoming very wise, or think they are, and they say, "We have now outgrown this old Bible, and are now living in a more intellectual age. Men are wiser than they used to be. They have got a great deal more culture; they have a great deal more refinement." But, my friends, with all your culture and all your refinement, can you find one man who has any better excuse than these three men had? I have met hundreds here in New York, in the inquiry room and outside of it, during the past few weeks, and I have yet to find the first man who has a better excuse. My friend, what is your excuse?
Have you got a better one? Why do you not accept the invitation? God invites you.
I have often heard people say "I would like to be a Christian very much, but O, it is so hard to serve God." Is that true? Is God a hard master? Is the devil an easy one? Is it true that those who have served both masters have found that
.God is such a hard master? Is He austere? Does He require us to perform more than we can? Does He reap where He has not sown? O, ye saints of the living God, is that your testimony? There never was a greater lie forged in hell and told on earth, than that. "The way of the transgressor is hard." Ask the men in prison, ask the drunkard, if the way of the transgressor is one of ease.
Go down to the Tombs. I am told that that little bridge over the prison yard over which the prisoners are led has written on one side the words, "The way of the transgressor is hard." If that is not true, how do they dare put it on there? They ought to take it off. There is not a man in all New York but knows as he goes down deep in his heart that the way of the transgressor is hard. On the other side of that bridge it is written, The Bridge of Sighs;" and over that the young men pass every day, and every one of them will testify that that portion of the Bible is true where it says the way of the transgressor is hard. So don't give that as an excuse.
There is another class that say, "I believe that. I believe the most delightful service in the world is serving Christ. That is not my excuse, but my excuse is this: There are so many things in that Bible that are dark and mysterious. I don't understand the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. If I could understand the Bible on reading it through once, I could accept the invitation; but there are so many dark and mysterious things that I cannot accept the invitation," and so we find a good many giving the Bible as an excuse. I contend there is no book under the sun that has been so misjudged as the Bible. Of all the skeptics and infidels I have ever met, I have yet to meet the first one that has read the Bible through from beginning to end. Now, if a book comes out and you have not read all of it, and you are asked your opinion of it, you say, I have not read it through yet, and don't like to express my opinion until I have more carefully read it." But people are not afraid of expressing their opinion of God's book after having read a few chapters, and because they don't understand what they have read, they condemn the whole.
I have a boy about say four or five years, and I send him to school to-morrow, and he comes home, and I ask him, "Willie, can you read and write and spell?
Do you understand all about geometry? Have you finished your algebra?"
"Why, papa," he says, "why do you talk that way? I have been all the time trying to learn what A, B and C are." "What!" I say, "have you not finished your education? I will take you right away from that school if you have not." Now there is just as much reason in my doing that as there is in a man's taking up the Bible and condemning it before he has studied it, and that excuse that these men are giving that they cannot accept the invitation because they don't understand the Bible, will not stand before Christ's tribunal.
When they go up and stand before the Lord they will say, "I was very anxious to accept the invitation to be at the marriage service of your Son, but there were many things in the Bible that were dark and mysterious, and so I could not accept the invitation." That excuse sounds very well here, but up there you can't tell that. You will be speechless when you stand before God's bar.
"Well," says another, "my trouble is not with the Bible, which I believe in from end to end, nor do I have any trouble about that other excuse about serving Christ: but the trouble I have is in seeing so many hypocrites, and I am not going to join the Church, there are so many hypocrites. I know a person who cheated me out of $5. and that same person pretends to be a Christian, and so you must not ask me to associate with hypocrites." Well, I say, if you don't want to associate with hypocrites, you had better get out of the world as soon as you can. You will find one hundred hypocrites outside of the Church where you will find one in it. If you don't want to associate with hypocrites, you had better accept this invitation at once. If I ever find a man who is a hypocrite, and betrays the cause of Christ, it only makes me want the love of Christ all the more, and I want to serve Him all the better. Because this or that man is untrue, is it any reason that I should like less the cause they betray? That is no excuse either, then. It is a personal, an individual matter with you. Suppose almost all men on the face of the earth are hypocrites, it is no sign that I or you should be so. Is that any reason why you should not become Christ's follower?
There is a young man over there who says, "Mr. Moody has not touched my case at all. My trouble is different. I would like to become a Christian, but if I become one, I am afraid I won't hold out." That is a very common excuse. We have it in the inquiry room every night. "There is no one in New York that feels more anxious to become a Christian than I do," said a young man the other night, "but I am afraid that I will not hold out." Now, is it our work to keep ourselves, or is it the work of the shepherd to keep the sheep? The keeper of Israel never slumbers and sleeps, and is not the God of Israel able to keep us? The work of the shepherd is to take care of the sheep, and not the sheep to take care of the shepherd.
Now the question comes, will you trust Him to-day? You will be able to stand if God stands with you. When I was talking with that young man, it reminded me of a boy whom I knew some years ago, whose father was a miserable drunken wretch and infidel, and he would not allow a praying man under his roof, for he said a man that prayed was nothing but a blackhearted hypocrite. Somebody got hold of his little boy, and got him into the Sabbath school, and he was converted. One day afterward, the old man caught him praying, and he caught him by the collar and jerked him to his feet, commanding him with oaths never to be caught doing that again, or he would have to leave home forever. Twice after that he caught him in the act of praying, and the last time told him to leave his house forever. The little fellow packed up his things in a handkerchief, went down into the kitchen where his mother was and bade her good-bye, then went and bade his little brother and sisters good-bye, and as he passed his father on his way to the door, he reached up his arms to put them around his father's neck, and said, "Good-bye, father. As long as I live, I will pray for you, and he went down the street, but he had not gone a great while, before his father came after him, and said, "If that is Christianity, I want it." And the boy went back and prayed with his father, and led him to Christ. So you see you cannot give any excuse for not coming to Jesus, so accept His invitation this hour and be saved.
But there is another excuse, and a good many of the young people give it. I have no doubt many of these little boys and girls here say, I don't want to be a Christian, for if I do, I shall have to be gloomy." I know that was one of my excuses before I was converted. I thought if I became a Christian, I had got to put on a long face, and walk on through the world, looking neither to the right nor to the left, and have no more joy until I got into the other world. In other words, that Christianity was to make me sad and gloomy and despondent. But no; that is not religion, for religion should make you happy and joyful. See this man on the way to execution. A pardon from the Governor is put into his hands, and the poor man goes home to his family. Do you think that is going to make him gloomy? That is what the Gospel is. A pardon comes from the throne of Heaven, and that is not going to make us gloomy, is it? If a man dying for bread is given bread, is that going to make him gloomy? That is what the Gospel is - bread to the soul. If you give water to a man dying of thirst, a clear draught from the spring, isn't that going to make him happy? Christ is the water of life. My friends, it does not make people gloomy. It makes people gloomy to want Christ. There are many who profess Christianity that don't have a living Christ in them, and those are the people who are gloomy. But when Christ is with us a living well of water gushing up, it is a living well of gladness. And so, little boy, little girl, young man, young maiden, don't give that for an excuse. Don't say, "I will not accept of this invitation because it will make me gloomy and sad." That is not the experience of the true Christian. If you want to see a person truly happy, with a joy that the world does not know anything about, you must go to those that have been Christ's, and have caught the spirit, for He brings us joy and true peace and happiness.
Then another thing. There are a great many men that want to come, and they say, "Wait until I am a better man, and then I will come." I never knew a man to be saved that came to Christ in that way. You cannot make yourselves any better. You cannot cleanse yourselves. Every day and hour that you are staying from Christ you are getting worse instead of better. The very act of your staying away is a sin, and so instead of trying to get better, and get ready to come, just come as you are and be clothed with the garments of salvation. He will clothe you with His own righteousness I noticed when our war was going on, men used to come to enlist, and the man who came with a fine suit of clothes on, and the hod-carrier in his dirty garments, would both have to take off their clothes and put on the uniform of the Government. And so, when men go into the Kingdom of God, they have to put on the livery of Heaven. You need not dress up for Christ, because He will strip you when you come and put on you the robes of His righteousness. My friends, you cannot stand before God in your own righteousness. Come to God as a poor beggar, and He will have mercy upon you.
I heard some years ago of an artist who wanted a model for the Prodigal. He went to many institutions and prisons, but could not get a man who suited his ideas of the Prodigal. One day, however, while walking down the street, he met a poor miserable tramp, and he suited the artist's eye, so he asked him if he would be willing to sit for his portrait. The tramp said he would, if the artist would pay him for it. The artist promised and set a day and hour for him to come. At the appointed time, when the artist was sitting in his studio, the man came in, but he was so well dressed, the artist didn't know him, and told him he had no appointment with him. When the beggar told him the circumstances, the artist said, "What have you been doing?" "Why,' said the man, I thought if I was going to sit for my portrait, I would get a new suit of clothes." "Ah," said the artist, you wont do; I wanted you just as you were." So, when you go to Christ, go just as you are, with all your rags, your filth, and your sin, and He will receive you. I don't care how bad you are. He came for that purpose, and there is not a man or woman in this hall to-night that is so bad that Christ would not have you if you will only come. You may be a thief, a drunkard, a libertine, polluted with sin, and corrupt as the devil would have you, and yet the Lord Jesus Christ will receive you if you will just come, and come without delay, just as you are.
But I need not go on enumerating excuses; if you drive a man from behind one excuse, he takes immediate refuge behind another. If you drive him from that, he gets behind another like a flash. You cannot exhaust excuses. They are more numerous than the hairs upon your head. I will tell you what you can do with them You can take them up and bind them in one bundle, and mark it,
"Lies, lies, lies" in great big letters. God will sweep away those refuges of lies. It is only a question of time. By and by you will be left without an excuse. He that believeth not, will be without God, without hope, without excuse. Do not think of giving excuses here. If you have any excuse that you call good, if you have any excuse that you think will stand the light of eternity and of the judgment day, if you think you have any excuse that God will accept, do not give it up for anything I have said. Take it into the grave with you. Let it be buried with you, and when you come before Him, tell it out. If not, then give your excuses to us here to-day. It is easy to excuse yourself into hell, but you cannot excuse yourself out of it. It is easy to take a seat here, and to make light of everything you hear, and go away laughing and scoffing at the whole thing; but ah, it will be terrible to stand before God without an excuse.
One of the most solemn things in Scripture is that not one of these men that were bidden to the feast of the Lamb and refused should taste of the supper. That is to say, that God would excuse them, taking them at their word. It will be a terrible thing to be excused from that feast. Do you really want to be excused? Is there a man or woman here that will say honestly that he or she would willingly be excused? Why not accept of the invitation now? Let the plough stand in the furrow, let the oxen stand in the stall until you accept the invitation. Let your business go until this question of eternity is settled with you. It is better for you to press into the Kingdom than it is for you to attend to any other duty. That is the first thing. A man must first attend to the soul's salvation. If your wife won't go, leave her at home. If you cannot get your family to join you, go alone. Make up your mind that to-day you will be up and pursuing that one object. If your companions make light of it, let them do it. It is Christ that invites you. Did you ever stop to think who will be there? Not one who has washed in the blood of the Lamb will be missing on that occasion. I would rather have my heart torn out of my body here on this platform, and go from here right straight to Heaven and be with Him at last, than live a hundred years and lose that opportunity. I want to be at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. I want to sit with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. I want to be in the presence of the King of Kings Do not make light of it.
I can imagine some of you saying, "I never yet got so low that I have been willing to make light of religion and serious things." Let me ask you: Suppose a man invites me to his house. Suppose he sends me a note and invites me to dinner with him, and I read it and simply tear it up or throw it aside and pay no more attention to it. Is not that making light of it? How many will thus walk out of this hall, and make light of everything they have heard? Suppose here we just write out a refusal of the invitation. "To the King of Heaven While sitting in the church on a beautiful day, January, 1899, I received a pressing invitation from one of Your servants to be present at the marriage supper of Your only begotten Son. I pray Thee accept my excuses. Now, who would come forward and take a pen, and dip it in the ink and put his name to that? I can imagine you saying, Let this right hand forget its cunning and this tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, before I would be guilty of such a thing ten thousand times, No?" But I will tell you what you will do. You will get up and go out and make light of the whole thing. Let us write out an acceptance "To the King of Heaven: January, 1899. While sitting in the meeting, I received a very pressing invitation from one of Your messengers to be present at the marriage supper of Your only begotten Son. I hasten to reply. By the grace of God I will be present." Who will sign that? Will you say from the depth of your heart, "I will do that?" Some one up there says, "Yes, I will." Thank God for that! Why should not the one person speak for the whole audience?