Hard Work, and Bad Pay!

Hard Work, and Bad Pay!

"The wages of sin is death!" (Romans 6:23).

What! is the reward for all that hard toil - death? Yes, death! Oh, extraordinary wages - but more astonishing still, that any should be found to work for them!

The death of the body, is but one result of sin. If sin had not found its way into God's fair earth - then death also would have been forever a stranger. Death is the dark shadow that sin casts. For six thousand years men have been receiving the wages of death. Death has passed upon all men, for all have sinned.

Think of the aggregate of sorrow that has come on this fallen world through death, the fruit of sin. Could all the groans that have burst from broken-hearted mourners since our first parents wept over their murdered son, be gathered into one - what a deep thunder-peal of anguish it would be! Were all the tears collected that death has caused to flow - what a briny ocean they would constitute! Let those call sin a trifle who dare - but to us it is clear that what could bring on man so dreadful a curse as death, must in itself be something unutterably horrible!

And yet mere physical death, is the least that is meant here. If this was all the Lord meant - if men when they die, die like dogs - there would be no occasion for the agony of soul we often have. But alas! alas! the death referred to here is a death that never dies! It is death; in another word, HELL! Here, poor sinner, are your wages - here is the result of a life's toil for satan, HELL!

Let me say moreover, sin pays some of its wages now; it gives sometimes an installment of hell on earth. The wretched debauchee often finds it so. Mark his haggard countenance, his trembling gait; follow him to the hospital - no don't - let his end remain secret; terrible are the wages he receives! But oh, eternity, eternity is sin's long pay-day - and the wages paid is hell! Such are the wages of sin. It promises much - but its reward is damnation!

Servants of sin and satan, behold your future doom! Be honest, and confess that your service is hard work, and bad pay. God forbid that this large concourse of people, there should be a single one who will ever learn by bitter, eternal experience that "the wages of sin is death!"

~Archibald Brown~