Grace Gems for DECEMBER 2004

Grace Gems for DECEMBER 2004 Building air-castle upon air-castle! (John MacDuff, "Thoughts for the Quiet Hour", 1895) He who goes about whining all day long about some imaginary drawbacks in the sphere which Providence has assigned him--when all the while he is situated so much better than thousands around--is a suicide of his own happiness! He is also impeaching the faithfulness of the Supreme Ordainer and Disposer. One half of life's enjoyment is eaten out by this sinful craving after what cannot be obtained--the desire for something supposed to be better. Yes, but when "the better" is reached, there is the yearning for an imagined "better" still. This is building air-castle upon air-castle! If in these days there be one household demon more than another which needs to be exorcized--it is the demon of discontent! Oh, for the spirit of Paul--poor and lonely prisoner in Rome as he was--an apparent bankrupt in all that the world deems wealth and affluence--yet who could make this entry in his letter to his Philippian friends--"I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. At the moment I have all I need--more than I need!" Dead and dark seasons (J. C. Philpot, "REVIEWS") All Christians, even the most eminent servants of God, have their dead and dark seasons--when the life of God seems sunk to so low an ebb as to be hardly visible--so hidden is the stream by the mud-banks of their fallen nature. By these very dark and dead seasons, the people of God are instructed. They see and feel what 'the flesh' really is--how alienated from the life of God; they learn in whom all their strength and sufficiency lie; they are taught that in them, that is, in their flesh, dwells no good thing; that no exertions of their own can maintain in strength and vigor the life of God; and that all they are, and have--all they believe, know, feel, and enjoy--with all their ability, usefulness, gifts, and grace--flow from the pure, sovereign grace--the rich, free, undeserved, yet unceasing goodness and mercy of God! They learn in this hard school of painful experience, their emptiness and nothingness--and that without Christ they can do nothing. They thus become clothed with humility, that rare, yet lovely garb; cease from their own strength and wisdom; and learn experimentally that Christ is, and ever must be, all in all to them, and all in all in them. At the cross (J. C. Philpot, "Contemplations & Reflections") Standing at the cross of our adorable Lord, we see . . . the law thoroughly fulfilled, its curse fully endured, its penalties wholly removed, sin eternally put away, the justice of God amply satisfied, all His perfections gloriously harmonized, His holy will perfectly obeyed, reconciliation completely effected, redemption graciously accomplished, and the church everlastingly saved! At the cross we see . . . sin in its blackest colors, and holiness in its fairest beauties. At the cross we see . . . the love of God in its tenderest form, and the anger of God in its deepest expression. At the cross we see the blessed Redeemer lifted up, as it were between heaven and earth, to show to angels and to men the spectacle of redeeming love, and to declare at one and the same moment, and by one and the same act of the suffering obedience and bleeding sacrifice of the Son of God--the eternal and unalterable displeasure of the Almighty against sin, and the rigid demands of His inflexible justice, and yet the tender compassion and boundless love of His heart to the elect. At the cross, and here alone, are obtained pardon and peace. At the cross, and here alone, penitential grief and godly sorrow flow from heart and eyes. At the cross, and here alone, is . . . sin subdued and mortified, holiness communicated, death vanquished, Satan put to flight, and happiness and heaven begun in the soul. O what heavenly blessings, what present grace, as well as what future glory, flow through the cross! What a holy meeting-place for repenting sinners and a sin-pardoning God! What a healing-place for guilty, yet repenting and returning backsliders! What a door of hope in the valley of Achor for the self-condemned and self-abhorred! What a blessed resting-place for the whole family of God in this valley of grief and sorrow! He will become a giant in wickedness! (Gardiner Spring, "Christian Parenting") Parents! You must recognize a mournful fact--your child is depraved! You will fail utterly to educate him if you don't recognize this sad reality. He possesses a supremely selfish spirit! 'Self-indulgence' is his king! Worse--unless he is instructed in moral truth, he will become a slave of base appetites and unholy passions! He will become a giant in wickedness! How many, O how many (Philpot, "Contemplations & Reflections") "These people draw near to Me with their mouth, and honor Me with their lips; but their heart is far from Me." Matthew 15:8 How many, O how many of those who sit in our chapels amid the people of God are perishing in their sins with . . . the Bible and hymn-book before their eyes, the sound of the gospel in their ears, the doctrines of grace on their lips, but the love of the world in their hearts! "Don't love the world, neither the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the Father's love isn't in him." 1 John 2:15 Pile in one mass (Henry Law, "Awakening and Inviting Calls") "Yes! He is altogether lovely! This is my Beloved, and this is my Friend!" Song of Solomon 5:16 Think of Jesus' matchless worth. Angels are great, but their collected weight is infinitely outweighed by Him. Pile in one mass . . . all kings and potentates of earth, all the wisdom of the wisest, all the might of the mightiest, all the strength of the strongest; it is all less than nothing, when compared to Him! Without Him heaven is no heaven. "Whom do I have in heaven but You? And I desire nothing on earth but You." Psalm 73:25 Have we nothing to give Christ? (J. C. Philpot, "REVIEWS") Have we nothing to give Christ? Yes! Our sins, our sorrows, our burdens, our trials, and above all the salvation and sanctification of our souls. And what has He to give us? What? Why, everything worth having, everything worth a moment's anxious thought, everything for time and eternity! It has ruined him, body and soul (J. C. Philpot, "REVIEWS") "In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace." Ephesians 1:7 As no heart can sufficiently conceive, so no tongue can adequately express, the state of wretchedness and ruin into which sin has cast guilty, miserable man. In separating him from God, it has severed him from the only Source and fountain of all happiness and all holiness. It has ruined him, body and soul. The body it has filled with sickness and disease. The soul it has defaced, and destroyed the image of God in which it was created. It has . . . shattered all his mental faculties; broken his judgment, polluted his imagination, alienated his affections. It has made him love sin--and hate God. It has filled him from top to toe with pride, lust, and cruelty, and has been the prolific parent of all those crimes and abominations under which earth groans, the bare recital of some of which has filled so many hearts with disgust and horror. These are the more visible fruits of the fall. But nearer home, in our own hearts, in what we are or have been, we find and feel what wreck and ruin sin has made! There can be no greater mark of alienation from God than willfully and deliberately to seek pleasure and delight in things which His holiness abhors. But who of the family of God has not been guilty here? Every movement and inclination of our natural mind, every desire and lust of our carnal heart, was, in times past, to find pleasure and gratification in something abhorrent to the will and word of the living Jehovah. There are few of us who, in the days of our flesh, have not sought pleasure in some of its varied but deceptive forms. The theater, the race-course, the dance, the sports, the card-table, the midnight revel, "the pleasures of sin" were resorted to by some of us. Our mad, feverish, thirst after excitement--the continued cry of our wicked flesh, "Give, give!"--our miserable recklessness or headlong, daring determination to 'enjoy ourselves', as we called it, cost what it would, plunged us again and again into the sea of sin, where, but for sovereign grace, we would have sunk to rise no more! Or, if the 'restraints of morality' put their check upon gross and sinful pleasures, there still was a seeking after such "allowable amusements" (as we deemed them), as change of scene and place, foreign travel, the reading of novels and works of fiction, fine dress, visiting, building up airy castles of love and romance, studying how to obtain human applause, devising plans of self-advancement and self-gratification, occupying the mind with cherished studies, and delighting ourselves in those pursuits for which we had a natural taste, as music, drawing, poetry, or, it might be, severer studies and scientific researches. We have named these middle-class pursuits as less obvious sins, than such gross crimes as drunkenness and vile debauchery in the lower walks of life. But, viewed with a spiritual eye, all are equally stamped with the same fatal brand of death in sin. The moral and the immoral, the refined and the unrefined, the polished few or the crude many, are alike "without God and without hope in the world." We are often met with this question, "What harm is there in this pursuit, or in that amusement?" The harm is, that the amusement is delighted in for its own sake; that it occupies the mind, and fills the thoughts, shutting God out; that it renders spiritual things distasteful; that it sets up an idol in the heart, and is made a substitute for God. Now this we never really know nor feel, until divine light illuminates the mind, and divine life quickens the soul. We then begin to see and feel into what a miserable state sin has cast us; how all our life long we have done nothing but what God abhors; that every imagination of the thoughts of our hearts has been evil, and only evil continually; that we have brought ourselves under the stroke of God's justice, under the curse of His righteous law, and now there appears nothing but death and destruction before our eyes, and unless we poor slaves of sin, Satan, and death were redeemed, we could not be reconciled to God. "In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace." Ephesians 1:7 Three books (J. C. Philpot, "REVIEWS") There are three books which, if a man will read and study, he can dispense with most others. 1. The book of Providence--and this he reads to good purpose, when he sees written down line by line the providential dealings of God with him, and a ray of Divine light gilds every line. 2. The Word of God--and this he reads to profit, when the blessed Spirit applies it with power to his soul. 3. The book of his own heart--and this he studies with advantage, when he reads in the new man of grace the blessed dealings of God with his soul-- and in the old man of sin and death, enough to fill him with shame and confusion of face, and make him loathe and abhor himself in dust and ashes. The whole apparatus of religion (J. C. Philpot, "Reviews") "I see that you are very religious in every way." Acts 17:22 Religion, in some shape or other, is indispensable to the very existence of civilized society. There is a natural religion--as well as a spiritual religion. Natural conscience is the seat of the former; a spiritual conscience the seat of the latter. One is of the flesh--the other of the Spirit. One for time--the other for eternity. One for the world--the other for the elect. One to animate and bind men together as component members of society--the other to animate and bind the children of God together as component members of the mystical body of Christ. True religion is what the world does not want --nor does true religion want the world. The two are as separate as Christ and Belial. But some religion the world must have! And as it will not have, and cannot have the true--it will and must have the false. True religion is . . . spiritual and experimental, heavenly and divine, the gift and work of God, the birthright and privilege of the elect, the peculiar possession of the heirs of God. This the world has not, for it is God's enemy--not His friend--walking in the broad way which leads to perdition--not in the narrow way which leads to eternal life. Worldly religion cannot exist without an order of men to teach it and practice its ceremonies. Hence come clergy, forming a recognized priestly caste. And as these must, to avoid confusion, be governed, all large corporate bodies requiring a controlling power, thence come bishops and archbishops, ecclesiastical courts, archdeacons--and the whole apparatus of clerical government. The ceremonies and ordinances cannot be carried on without buildings set apart for the purpose--thence churches and cathedrals.

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Grace Gems for DECEMBER 2004

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