Feb 26
1
A
thin slice of godliness
over a mass of carnality!
Spurgeon, “Constancy and Inconstancy: a Contrast.”
“…what shall I do unto thee?” asks the Lord.
“for your goodness is as a morning cloud and as the early
dew it goeth away.”
Hosea 6:4
Oh, beware of pious
veneering!
Beware of the religion which consists
in putting on a
thin slice of godliness
over a mass of carnality!
We must have thorough going work
within; the grace which reaches the
core, and affects the innermost spirit
is the only grace worth having.
The absence of the Holy Spirit is the
great cause of religious instability.
Beware of mistaking ‘religious excitement’
for the Holy Spirit, or your own resolutions
for the deep workings of the Spirit of God
in the soul.
All that human nature ever paints, God
will burn off with hot irons. All that human
nature ever spins he will unravel and cast
away with the rags.
You must be born from above, you must
have a new nature wrought in you by the
finger of God himself, for of all his saints
it is written, “You are his workmanship,
created anew in Christ Jesus.”
Oh, but, everywhere I fear there is an
absence of the Holy Spirit! There is much
getting up of a tawdry morality, barely
skin deep, much crying “Peace, peace,”
where there is no true peace. There is
very little deep heart searching anxiety
to be thoroughly purged from sin.
The hopes of many hypocrites are flimsily
formed, and their confidences ill founded.
It is this which makes deceivers so plentiful,
and fair religious shows so common.
“The Gainsaying of Core”
Jude 11
All false prophets are also mimics of Korah. Korah sought to overthrow both God’s prophet Moses and God’s priest Aaron. The Korahs of our day are exactly like them. They oppose God’s faithful servants, seek to turn the people they serve against them and the gospel of God’s rich, free grace in Christ.
Again, their behaviour is not a matter of ignorance. They know full well that the men they oppose are God’s servants, and that the gospel they oppose is the gospel of God. But false prophets are, as God the Holy Ghost describes them by Jude’s pen, men of insatiable lusts, sensual, and ungodly. They will stop at nothing to get your smile and pick your pocket. They think no more of destroying a faithful man’s name or destroying a church than they do of stepping on a roach. — God’s servants are not like them (2 Corinthians 4:5-7).
Don Fortner
“Man’sreligion is to build up the creature.God’s religionis to throw the creature down in the dust of self-abasement, and to glorify Christ.”
J.C.Philpot
What
man needs
(Horatius Bonar)
It is not ‘opinions’ which man needs—it is TRUTH!
It is not ‘theology’ which man needs—it is GOD!
It is not ‘religion’ which man needs—it is CHRIST!
Ministers are often desirous of . . .
“And sleekest thou great things for thyself? Seek them
not!” Jeremiah 45:5
Ministers are often desirous of . . .
a greater gift in preaching,
a readier utterance,
a more abundant variety,
a more striking delivery than they possess.
And this, not for the glory of God, but for the
glory of the creature. Not that praise may be
given God, but that pride, cursed pride, may
be gratified; that they may be admired by men.
My desire and aim is . . .
not to deceive souls by flattery;
not to please any party;
not to minister to any man’s pride or presumption;
but simply and sincerely, with an eye to God’s glory,
with His fear working in my heart, to speak to the
edification of His people.
A minister who stands up with any other motives,
and aiming at any other ends than the glory of God,
and the edification of His people, bears no scriptural
marks that he has been sent into the vineyard by
God Himself.
J.C.Philpot
Pride, that ancient sin, creeps into our hearts like a serpent!
C.H.Spurgeon
“When pride cometh, then cometh shame: but with the lowly
is wisdom!” Proverbs 11:2
In the quiet chambers of every Christian’s heart, a battle
rages—a struggle as old as humanity itself. It is the battle . . .
between pride, and humility,
between the exaltation of self, and the surrender to God.
Let us peruse the Scriptures as we contemplate the dangers of pride and the virtues
of humility.
Pride, that ancient sin, creeps into our hearts like a
serpent—whispering lies of self-sufficiency and self-importance. It
blinds us to our own faults, and leads us down the path of destruction. Pride
is an ugly, mother-sin—which gives birth to a whole family of
horrid sins.
Pride is the most deceitful sin!
When pride reigns in the heart—it exalts the creature above the Creator,
seeking its own glory rather than God’s.
But oh, the beauty of genuine humility! Humility is the most lovely grace, and it is the mark of
a soul surrendered to God. Humility is a sense of our own sinfulness and
weakness, combined with a quiet confidence in God’s sovereignty and
sufficiency.
Humility is thought to be the chief virtue, for it is the
gateway to wisdom and grace. With humility comes . . .
the fear of the Lord,
the beginning of wisdom,
and the knowledge of the Holy One.
Consider the example of Christ, the humble King who stooped down
to wash His disciples’ feet. In His humility, He demonstrated the true nature
of greatness—not in power or prestige, but in service and self-sacrifice. We
should strive to imitate Jesus in all things, including His humbleness. He
commands us: “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart.” Matthew 11:29
Let us then, heed the wisdom and the counsel of Scripture. Let
us crucify the prideful desires of the flesh, and clothe ourselves with
humility—that we may walk in wisdom and grace.
The
mother and mistress of all the sins!
“Pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the forward
mouth, do I hate.” Proverbs 8:13
“Every one that is proud in heart is an
abomination to the Lord: though hand join in
hand, he shall not be unpunished.” Proverbs 16:5
Of all sins, pride seems most deeply imbedded in the
very heart of man. Unbelief, sensuality, covetousness, rebellion,
presumption, contempt of God’s holy will and word, deceit and falsehood,
cruelty and wrath, violence and murder—these, and a forest of other sins have
indeed struck deep roots into the black and noxious soil of our fallen nature;
and, interlacing their lofty stems and gigantic arms, have wholly shut out the
light of heaven from man’s benighted soul.
But these and their associate evils do not seem so thoroughly
interwoven into the very constitution of the human heart, nor so to be its very
life-blood, as pride.
The lust of the flesh is strong, but there are
respites from its workings.
Unbelief is powerful, but there
are times when it seems to lie dormant.
Covetousness is
ensnaring, but there is not always a bargain to be made, or an advantage to be
clutched.
These sins differ also in strength in different individuals.
Some seem not much tempted with the grosser passions of our fallen nature;
others are naturally liberal and benevolent, and whatever other idol they may
serve, they bend not their knee to the golden calf.
But where lust may have no power, covetousness no
dominion, and anger no sway—there, down, down in the inmost
depths, heaving and boiling like the lava in the crater of a volcano, works
that master sin—that sin of sins, pride!
Pride is the
mother and mistress of all the sins; for where she does not
conceive them in her ever-teeming womb, she instigates their movements, and
compels them to pay tribute to her glory.
The ‘origin of evil’ is hidden from our eyes. Whence it
sprang, and why God allowed it to arise in His fair creation,
are mysteries which we cannot fathom. But thus much is revealed—that of this
mighty fire which has filled Hell with sulphurous flame, and will one day
envelop earth and its inhabitants in the general conflagration, the
first spark was pride!
Pride is therefore emphatically the devil’s own sin. We
will not say his darling sin, for it is his torment—the serpent which is always
biting him, the fire which is ever consuming him. But it is the sin which
hurled him from heaven, and transformed him from a bright and holy seraph, into
a foul and hideous demon!
How subtle, then, and potent must that poison be,
which could in a moment change an angel into a devil! How black in nature, how
concentrated in virulence that venom—one drop of which could
utterly deface the image of God in myriads of bright spirits before the
throne—and degrade them into monsters of uncleanness and malignity!
J.C.Philpot
Broken
people!
(Don Fortner)
“The LORD is near to those who have a broken heart,
and saves such as have a contrite spirit.” Psalm 34:18
A broken heart, a contrite spirit, and
a subdued will are rare things, especially in
this age in which men everywhere are taught to demand their rights; and the
church has become a place where man is exalted and enshrined
as though he were God. Self-esteem, self-worth, and self-promotion is the cry
of the day. Every man does that which is right in his own eyes. All men by
nature are exceedingly proud, selfish people.
Preachers today, knowing man’s natural pride, have capitalised
upon it. They have developed a flesh-pleasing theology of pride.
Our forefathers exalted the dignity, the majesty, and the supremacy of the
eternal God. But the smooth-tongued preachers of deceit in
our day have set themselves to exalt the dignity, majesty, and supremacy
of puny man! It seems that religion today is dedicated not to
the honour of God, but to the honour of man. Its
purpose is to make man feel good about himself. Therefore we hear little about
. . .
brokenness of heart,
contrition of the soul, and
the subduing of man’s will.
The Lord God declares, “To this man will I look, even to
him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembles at My Word!”
(Isaiah 66:2). God will have broken hearts with which to build His kingdom.
Sooner or later, the Lord God will bring us to nothingness before His presence.
God’s people, all of God’s people are a broken
people.
No man has ever experienced the grace of God in salvation, until
his heart is thoroughly broken before the holy Lord God, revealed in the
crucified Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. If ever a man finds out:
who he is,
who God is,
who the Lord Jesus Christ is,
and what He has done for sinners
— he will be a broken man!
When Job saw himself in the presence of his three miserable
friends, he vindicated himself. But when he stood in the presence of God, he
was a broken man; and he spoke as a broken man. He saw himself in
all the hideousness of his sin; and he saw God in all the
holiness of His glorious majesty. Then he said, “Behold I am vile! I
have heard of You by the hearing of the ear: but now my eye sees You.
Therefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes!” There
is no pride and egotism here, no haughtiness, no self-vindication. Once Job had
seen the Lord — he was broken, he loathed himself and blamed himself. Once Job
saw the Lord — he honoured God and vindicated Him. The truly broken heart will
always vindicate God, no matter the cost.
This brokenness can’t be produced in proud, stubborn, sinful men
and women — only by the saving revelation of Christ in our hearts. Brokenness
is found at the cross — only at the cross. Have you been to the cross? Have you
had the crucified Christ revealed in your heart? Has your heart been broken by
the knowledge of the Lord? O Lord, evermore break our hearts before You!
“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a
contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.” Psalm 51:17