The dregs of old age! – Thomas Brooks
“Let me die the death of the righteous, and may my end be like theirs!” Numbers 23:10
Many desire to repent when old age comes when . . .
their wits are cracked,
their souls distracted,
their senses stupefied,
their hearts astonished,
their minds darkened, and
their bodies diseased and distempered.
Oh, then they think that they will be able to leap into heaven, with a “Lord have mercy upon me” in their mouths. Even though they have lived like devils yet they hope they shall die like saints!
Do you think, O vain man that after you have spent your time, and wasted your strength, and exhausted your energies in the work of Satan, and in the service of your lusts that God will receive you to His grace and favor? If you do thus flatter yourself it is ten thousand to one that you will deceive yourself! Though true repentance is never too late yet late repentance is seldom true. Ah, how many millions are now in hell who have thought, and resolved, and said that they would repent hereafter but that hereafter never came!
You say “Tomorrow, tomorrow I will repent,” when you know not what a tomorrow will bring forth. Alas! how many thousand ways may death surprise you before tomorrow comes! Though there is but one way to come into the world yet there are a thousand thousand ways to be sent out of the world. Oh, the diseases, the hazards, the dangers, the accidents, the deaths which daily which hourly attend the life of man!
Ah friends! it is a dangerous thing to make repentance to be the task of old age. The longer any man defers his repentance, the more difficult it will be for him to repent:
his heart will every day grow more and more hard, and
his will more and more perverse, and
his judgment more and more corrupted, and
his affections more and more disordered, and
his conscience more and more benumbed or enraged, and
his whole life more and more defiled and debauched.
Friends, do not deceive yourselves! Old age is but a tottering and sinking foundation for you to build your eternal hopes and happiness upon your eternal making or marring upon! Are the dog-days of old age are the trembling hands, the wrinkled face, the failing eyes, the gasping lungs, the fainting heart, the feeble knees, and the broken down legs are these a sacrifice worthy of a majestic God? Is a body full of sores, aches, and diseases and a soul full of sin an offering worthy of a holy God? Surely not!
Oh, what madness, what wickedness is this to serve Satan, your lusts, and this world with full dishes and to put off God with scraps! To serve Satan, your lusts, and this world in the flower, in the prime and primrose of your days and to put off God with the dregs of old age! Oh, do not let Satan deceive you, do not let your own hearts delude you!