But I hear you say you cannot come alone, you cannot struggle by yourself, you cannot brave alone the thunderings and lightnings of Mount Sinai, you cannot stand with Moses on the smoking and the quaking summit, you must mingle with the multitude below. You are not even willing to be saved alone. Having followed a multitude so long to do evil, you still feel the need of communion and example, of mutual incitement and restraint. And you shall have it. You shall have it in perfection if you will but come. For ye are come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, to the general assembly and church of the first-born, which are written in heaven. The Church of Christ stands open to receive you, to protect you, and to nourish you. Her institutions, her examples, her worship, her ordinances, her communion, all, all are ready for you. This is a want for which the grace that rescues you has specially provided. You are not asked to be saved alone, though that were surely better than to perish. You may bring as many with you as you will, and you will find many entered in before you. When we bid you come, you are invited to a feast, of which many, thanks be to God, are after all partakers, and though many that are bidden make excuse or even venture to make light of it, the giver of the banquet shall be still supplied with guests; for while the broad way that leadeth to destruction remains crowded with infatuated victims, another concourse is seen streaming from the bye-ways and the hedges to the table of the Lord, where they shall sit down, clothed and in their right minds, washed and beautified, ennobled and refined, while many who appeared to be hereditary children of the kingdom, are excluded or exclude themselves from all participation in the banquet. Of the company thus gathered and transformed you are to form a part. The doors stand open, open to receive you, and yet there is room. If all obstructions have now vanished from without and from within, if atonement, and forgiveness, and renewal are accessible, and if the Church is ready to receive you into its communion of saints, what remaining pretext for delay can be imagined? Come, for all things are now ready.
Theology on Fire: Sermons from the Heart of J.A. Alexander, available here.
