Then think again, there is the Master to be considered. The Lord—is he always to be resisted and provoked and yet to continue to have patience? Many of you have had eternal life set before you as to be received by simply believing in Jesus Christ; and you have refused to believe. Now, my Lord might have said to me, “Go home, you have done your duty with them; never set Christ before them again, I am not going to have my Son insulted.” If you offer a beggar in the street a shilling and he demurs, and will not have it, you cheerfully put it into your purse and go your way; you do not stand there begging him to have his wants relieved: but, behold, our God in mercy has been begging sinners to come to him, imploring them to accept his Son. In his condescension he has even come down to this—to be like a salesman in the market, crying, “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money, come buy wine and milk, without money and without price.” In another place he says of himself, “All day long have I stretched out my hands to a disobedient and gainsaying generation.” Well, if the Lord of mercy has been refused, and the Lord of love has been despised so long in the sight of you who reverence him, does not some indignation mingle with your pity, and while you love sinners and would have them saved, do you not feel in your heart that there must be an end to such insulting behaviour, and such matchless patience? You cannot always be pleading with those who will not be persuaded, for he that refuseth you refuseth him that sent you. I ask those whose hearts are hard to think of the matter in this light, and if they do not respect the ploughman, yet let them have regard to his Master.C. H. Spurgeon, “A Question for Hard-Hearted Hearers (No. 1,470),” in The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, 63 vols. (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1879), 25:236–37.
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