“UNTIL”

THE Shepherd seeks the lost sheep “UNTIL he finds it” (Luke xv. 4). And it is only the lost sheep that lies in the pathway of the seeking Shepherd. If I take the place of a lost sinner and nothing else, it is not so much my part to seek Christ, as His to seek me. This is grace. He seeks until He finds; He does not stop in His search until He and we meet. Alas! our part is only straying.
The word of LAW would be: “They that seek Me early shall find Me” (Prov. viii. 17). And the consequence of man being put on this ground is stated by God Himself: “There is none that seeketh after God.” (Rom. iii. 2.)
The holy, just and good law of God came demanding of us love to God, and proved that what God justly demands from man, He does not get, and cannot get; so that without exception, it may be said of all men who ought to have sought after God, “There is none that seeketh after God.”
GRACE comes in now, and says, “I will seek you, and I will seek until I find.” Thank God, it is He who breaks in upon us, and not we upon Him. We would willingly remain among those who “forget” God. Our wills are free only to wander and get farther from Him. In fact, the first thing God does in breaking in upon our enmity is, “to make us willing.”
Our part is to take the place of a sinner and nothing else. Most people believe they are sinners, but comparatively few believe that they are sinners and nothing else but sinners.
As truly as He hath shown us that we are lost, and nothing but lost, so surely can we gladly claim that seeking Shepherd; for He seeks until He finds.
Nothing stops Him in His search—not all the hatred of man or devils; not all the malice and spite and envy of the chief priests; not all the murmurings of the Pharisees and scribes; not all the waywardness of the wandering sheep; nor the in-difference and degradation of those for whom He is searching. He will have His joy—that joy that rejoices not, UNTIL it finds.
2. But there is another and awful “UNTIL” in Luke xvii. 27: “They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, UNTIL the day that Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all; and as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of Man.”
That little word “UNTIL” tells out the sad story of what man is. Men will please themselves, let God’s claims or God’s grace be where they may. And thus will they go on “UNTIL.”
But every history has its UNTIL. The course of the vilest infidel is brought to a close by an UNTIL. The world’s race to destruction will be consummated in that UNTIL. Vain are the thoughts of those who think of the gradual conversion of the world. They go on as JESUS CHRIST said they would—careless, and wholly engrossed with their own affairs, until the Lord comes.
This is not each man knowing the Lord “from the least to the greatest.” The world goes on in rebellion and self-pleasing until the Lord comes and sweeps them away, as with the besom of destruction. May we now be as men that believe this and tell out the virtues of a Christ for sinners, until that day.
Few of us, I fear, realize that there is a way of keeping out of hell, but no way of getting out of it.
That blasphemous infidelity, that the punishment of the wicked will not be eternal, is sapping the very foundation of Christian action. What is the use of Christian effort? Let us take things quietly, if, after suffering for awhile in a purgatorial hell, all are to be restored!
May God have mercy on us for our lukewarmness, and stir us all up to believe His simple Word, that until Jesus comes men will go on in their mad career, but that this is the limit to their proud waves; for we again read, that—
The heavens will receive Jesus Christ “UNTIL the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken,” etc. And this until, while being glorious, and final salvation to the Christ-receiver, restoration to God’s ancient people, and emancipation to a groaning creation, is the time of destruction of all Christ’s rejectors. For God says (Acts iii. 21, 22), that in the time of the restitution of all things, “it shall come to pass, that every soul which will not hear that Prophet (JESUS) shall be DESTROYED from among the people.”   
“Let God be true, and every man a liar.” Christ will remain away UNTIL this time of mingled salvation and destruction.—salvation to all who were sought and found by Him; destruction to all who rejected Him, it being one of God’s impossibilities to renew such to repentance. Solemn words! May we make our calling and election sure!
“He came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” Thus called and thus saved, we can patiently wait, leaning on the precious Word, while even some that profess Christ’s name are leaning to their own understandings, and taking their own ideas as their light; or while a godless, reckless world is posting on to destruction, taking no warning, dancing madly, blindly on, UNTIL (and what an until it will be!)—until He shall gird His sword on His thigh, to slay and not to heal; and, in the midst of their calamity and dreadful fear, His word is, “I will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh.”
“Abundant Grace” 1885