A Call Of Warning

You have no power to say, "I'll hear the trumpet tomorrow." 

It may not blow tomorrow. 

You haven't got the control of the trumpet, God has. And God's Holy Spirit is the breath by which the trumpet sounds.

And you cannot order the Holy Spirit to speak to you another time. He says, "Today if you will hear, today... I guarantee nothing after today, I call today." "Today if you will hear His voice..." 

Yes it's love, it's mercy, but it is solemn warning.

There seems to be two tones mingling in this sound, it's a joyful sound, it's a joyful sound, how blessed, how pleasant is the Gospel sound, it's the Gospel sound and 'Gospel' means 'good news'.

It's good news sounding forth: God has, by His Son, His Son's death, His Son's bearing of our sin and our judgement, God has provided redemption. 

That's good news for you, dear friends, for you He's provided. That's the joyful sound.

The psalmist speaks of the joyful sound and they're blessed who hear the joyful sound.

And yet, and yet, mingled with the joyful sound there is a solemn sound. 

The Bible speaks of solemn festivities; solemn festivities, the mingling of joy and solemnity because of the tremendous issues that are involved.

And you would not have me do other than tell you that it is, it is a solemn and a very terrible thing to close your heart and your ears to God speaking.

There's a lot involved, a lot involved, oh, everything is involved! 

I remember so well some years, yes many years ago, I was visiting in the house of a friend and there came to that house that evening a man and we got talking after the evening meal.

And he said, "I, somehow or other, I felt I'd got to come over here tonight." He'd come right across from the other side of the village. 

"Somehow I felt I'd got to come over here tonight, I don't know why, I can't explain it at all, but there it is." So I said, "Oh well, probably as we talk on we will discover why."

And I began to talk to him. It wasn't very long before we discovered the why, God had some interest in that life for which I'd been brought there that night. And I said "What about it?" and he said, "Well, I must go away and think about it." 

"Well," I said, "Don't think too long, arrive at a conclusion as quick as you can."

He went away, we didn't hear anything of him for a little while. 

Strangely enough, I was in that same home some few weeks afterwards and the same man arrived at the same time! He looked a little sheepish when he found I was there again, and at any rate I was for business.

Before long I came down and said "Well, what about that matter?" it came out, "You said that you believe that God had brought you right across the city for that thing, that night. What about it?"

And he said, "Yes, I thought about it, and then I went to consult someone about it and asked them..." (a minister by the way, a minister whom he happened to know) "and he said 'Oh don't you worry about those things. Don't worry about those things, don't you become fanatical. It's alright, it's alright.'" 

Well, I said, "Oh, so it's this man or it's God! 

You said that you believed that God had brought you and spoken to you and raised an issue and then you allow man to contradict God and say 'it doesn't matter what God says.'" 

Well, we got down and again he came to it and he said, "I can't get away from it, I believe, I believe that's what God wants." 

He got right to the point again, but he wouldn't give in; he wouldn't have that transaction.

He went away again, and it was some months before I saw him and for the third time this thing happened, and still he didn't respond to God.

And then sometime afterward I happened to be right on the other side of the city and was walking along a certain road and I saw a man coming toward me on a cycle and he got within recognition distance of me and saw who it was and wheeled round on his cycle and went for dear life.

And I heard later that that man had gone headlong into sin and lost all hope, down deep into a lost condition. 

Don't run that risk. 

When God speaks, when God brings you where the trumpet is sounding it's a very, very big thing that is at stake: whether you respond or whether you say, "Well, I'll think about it" or "I must ask So-and-so about it and see what they say."

Or any other kind of prevarication. No, no, the Lord says "Today, if you will hear His voice..." While it is today... everything may hang upon that.

I'm not trying to be emotional, I'm not trying to be sensational, but I am saying that the trumpet sounds, the trumpet sounds, you've heard it, the Spirit of God speaking to you and telling you tonight what God wants where you are concerned.

He wants you to Himself as one of His redeemed ones in the enjoyment of that redemption.

It is for you to say, "Yes I hear and I respond, I come, I answer the call." May God so influence you that you will do that.

~T. Austin Sparks~