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We must all be gathered in due course. It may come tomorrow; it may be deferred another handful of years. Filled with a holy horror of the hell of sinners, let us make most sure our calling to the heaven of the blessed. Consider —

I. THE GATHERING. There have been many such — Korah, Dathan, and Abiram; Jericho and the Canaanites; the destruction of Jerusalem. But forgetting all these inferior gatherings, let us look on to the last great one, which is proceeding every day to its completion As the huntsman, when he goes forth to the battle, encompasses the beasts of the forest with an ever-narrowing ring of hunters, that he may exterminate them all in one great slaughter, so the God of Justice has made a ring in His providence about the sinful, sons of men. None can escape. I will not attempt, to describe, what our Saviour, veiled in words like these: "These shall go away into everlasting punishment."

II. THE PRAYER ITSELF. We are all agreed about it, every one of us. Sinners do not wish to be gathered with sinners. But the reasons of the one prayer are different in different persons. A selfish desire to escape misery is sufficient to account for it with sinful men. There is a class of sinners that some would like to be gathered with now. Can we say, when we look upon the bright side of the wicked, "Gather not," etc.? If we cannot we really cannot pray the prayer at all. But the Christian prays this prayer because, as far as his acquaintance with sinners goes, he does not even now wish for their company. We cannot be with them and feel ourselves perfectly at home. And even now, when God comes to punish a nation, the Christian has to suffer with the rest. He may well, from the little taste he has had of their company, pray, "Gather not," etc. I do not know any class of sinners whose company the Christian would desire. I should not like to live with the most precise of hypocrites, nor with the formalist; and as for the blasphemer, we would as soon be shut up in a tiger's den. And there are other reasons. When sinners are gathered at the last their characters will be the same. And think of the place, the pit of hell. Their occupations, cursing God; their sufferings, the pain of body and soul they know. And they are forever banished from God and Christ.

III. But there is in our text A FEAR, as if a whisper said, "Perhaps, after all, you may be gathered with the wicked." This fear may arise from remembrance of past sin. Before we were converted we lived as others. Present backwardness, unfruitfulness, and our conscious weakness, these all rouse this fear. Therefore note —

IV. THE ANSWER TO THIS PRAYER. Have you the two things that David had, the outward integrity and the inward trust? If so, then you cannot be gathered with sinners. For the rule is, like to like. And our comrades here are to be our companions hereafter. And we have been too dearly bought with Christ's blood, and are too much loved by God; and the new nature given you will not allow of it. Careless and thoughtless one, I entreat you to consider if it be not a dreadful thing to be a sinner.

( C. H. Spurgeon.)

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KJV: Gather not my soul with sinners, nor my life with bloody men:

WEB: Don't gather my soul with sinners, nor my life with bloodthirsty men;