We write a word on the blackboard. When we have finished with it, we erase it. What becomes of the word? It disappears, does it not? It vanishes. You can never find it again, for it is gone. God has done a more wonderful thing than that with our sins when we have believed on the Lord Jesus Christ as our Saviour, and have seen that He died for us. He takes our sins away. He removes them from us. When the word is erased from the board, the particles of chalk remain on the eraser or fall down on the tray below the board, so that really the chalk that formed the word is all there. But when God takes away our sins, He takes them so far away that they can never be found again. God wants us to know this. He does not want us to be afraid all the time that someday they will come up and face us again. So He says many things about what He has done with our sins since we have believed. Each thing that He says is to show us that our sins are gone, and that we will never, never see them again, here or hereafter.
If I take this book in my hand and want to lay it down I cannot lay it nowhere. I must lay it on a table, or a chair, or on the floor, or on something. I cannot just let it drop to nowhere! (As you speak do these different things. Let it drop but call attention to the fact that it lands somewhere.) The same thing is true about sins. They are either on you, or on someone else. You cannot wish them away to nowhere, as perhaps you would like to do.
There are some things that never fail to happen. If you put your finger in a flame, you will be burned. This is a law of nature, and never fails to be fulfilled. If you have ever been burned, you know how careful you are afterward to keep away from the fire. You have learned your lesson.
The rescue mission is an interesting place. There you see men and women dressed in rags, some drunk, some with scarred faces, and some unable to walk. The reason why they are so terrible looking is because of sin. They have gone deep down into sin, and it has left its marks upon them. Just as soon as you look at them you know they are sinners. There are other people who do not look like sinners, beautiful and gracious ladies, men who are kind and generous and who seem to be perfect gentlemen, and do not appear to be sinners like these others; but that is looking at them from the outside only. We cannot see their hearts. Only God can see hearts, and He has told us in His Word secrets about people that we would never guess from looking at the outside.
There's another point I want to make here. "Come and see," is the come of invitation and salvation. "Come and rest," is the come of security. The third point is in Mark 6:31, where the Lord invited the disciples to come apart and rest. "And he said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while: for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat." And this is talking to Christians and telling them that they had better take it easy from time to time. Every once in a while you come to somebody in Christian life and work that thinks he has to do the whole thing-he works himself into a nervous breakdown, saying, "There's so much to be done. I've got this and this and this to do." No, you don't!
