Anthropology

October 25, 2013 by kevinstilley

The Backslider in Heart : Discussion Questions

LECTURES ON REVIVALS OF RELIGION
by The Rev. CHARLES G. FINNEY
LECTURE XXI
THE BACKSLIDER IN HEART

[These discussion questions relate to Charles Finney’s Lectures on Revivals of Religion: Lecture 21 – “Backsliders In Heart”. The full text for Charles Finney’s “Backsliders in Heart” is included below the following discussion questions. When page numbers are mentioned in the discussion questions they refer to the edition of the text published by Alethea in Heart, isbn. 1932370471]

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

1. When I was a child it was common for me to hear of “backsliding” or of “carnal Christianity. I do not hear that language much today. Do you think that this represents a shift in theology and/or praxis?

2. Finney says that “It [backsliding] does not consist in the subsidence of highly excited religious emotions. The subsidence of religious feeling may be an evidence of a backslidden heart, but it does not consist in the cooling off of religious feeling.” What role do you think that emotions play in vital Christianity?

3. Finney lists four things that he describes as backsliding. (p. 406) How do you feel about this predication? How common are the things he mentions?

4. How do you recognize in your own life when you are observing the forms of religion but have lost the power of godliness?

5. In section III, Finney lists all of the following as indicators of a backslidden condition: formality in religious exercises, lack of religious enjoyment, finding religious duties a burden, an ungoverned temper, a spirit of uncharitablenes, a spirit of fault-finding that impugns the motives of others, a want of interest in God’s Word, a want of interest in secret prayer, a want of interest in the conversion of souls and in efforts to promote revivals of religion, lack of interest in missions, the loss of interest in benevolent enterprises, the loss of interest in truly spiritual conversation, the loss of interest in socializing with other Christians, the loss of interest in the question of sanctification, the loss of interest in those newly converted, an uncharitable state of mind in regard to professed converts, the want of the spirit of prayer, ungodly prayers, and selfish prayers, absence from prayer meetings, neglecting family prayer, secret prayer is regarded more as a duty than as a privilege, being given to worldly amusements, spiritual blindness, religious apathy, a disposition to gratify the appetites, passions and propensities, a seared conscience, loose moral principles, prevalence of the fear of man, a rigid attitude in forms, ceremonies and nonessentials, objections measures that are evidently blessed of God. Do you think this is a good list for self-reflection? Do you agree with all that is on his list? Do you think there are other items that could be added to this list?

6. What items on this list did you find particularly interesting? Did you agree? Stongly agree? Disagree? Strongly disagree? Were you moved, motivated, stimulated, aggravated?

7. Finney claims that those whose heart is devoted to God will enjoy serving him. Is he correct? He says that “whenever you lose your religious enjoyment, or the enjoyment of serving God, you may know that you are not serving Him aright.” What is the right course of action if you find service to God burdensome? Is enjoyment and pain mutually exclusive?

8. Finney claims that God “does not accept the service of bondsmen, who serve Him because they must. He accepts none but a love service.” Are there any biblical texts that deal with his issue?

9. Have you ever heard anyone use their “bad temper” as an excuse for bad action? What does Finney say about an ungoverned temper? Do you agree with him? Where does personality and temperament fit into a discussion of spirituality? Do introverts run the risk of being labeled as backslidden or unspiritual by Finney or in the modern church?

10. What additional considerations or qualifications might you add to other items on his list?

11. In section IV Finney describes the consequences of a backslidden heart. What is the distinction he is making between the items on this list and the evidences of a backslidden heart in Section III?

12. What do you think of Finney’s recipe for recovery from backsliding? [Section V]

13. Finney says that you are not in a “justified state” if you are backslidden. What does he mean by that? Is this an indicator of his theology? What do you think of this claim?

14. What is the connection between Finney’s discussion of “backsliding” and the churches responsibility to disciple believers?

15. Finney does not cite many scriptural texts to support his claims. Why? What do you think of this absence?

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LECTURE XXI – BACKSLIDERS IN HEART – TEXT:

The backslider in heart shall be filled with his own ways. – Proverbs 14:14.

I cannot conclude this course of lectures, without warning converts against backsliding. In discussing this subject, I will show:

I. What backsliding in heart is not.

II. What backsliding in heart is.

III. What are evidences of backsliding in heart.

IV. What are consequences of backsliding in heart.

V. How to recover from this state.

I. WHAT A BACKSLIDING HEART IS NOT.

1. It does not consist in the subsidence of highly excited religious emotions. The subsidence of religious feeling may be an evidence of a backslidden heart, but it does not consist in the cooling off of religious feeling.

II. WHAT BACKSLIDING IN HEART IS.

1. It consists in taking back that consecration to God and His service, that constitutes true conversion.

2. It is the leaving, by a Christian, of his first love.

3. It consists in the Christian withdrawing himself from that state of entire and universal devotion to God, which constitutes true religion, and coming again under the control of a self-pleasing spirit.

4. The text implies that there may be a backslidden heart, when the forms of religion and obedience to God are maintained. As we know from consciousness that men perform the same, or similar, acts from widely different, and often from opposite, motives, we are certain that men may keep up all the outward forms and appearances of religion, when in fact, they are backslidden in heart. No doubt the most intense selfishness often takes on a religious type, and there are many considerations that might lead a backslider in heart to keep up the forms, while he had lost the power of godliness in his soul.

III. WHAT ARE EVIDENCES OF A BACKSLIDDEN HEART.

1. Manifest formality in religious exercises. A stereotyped, formal way of saying and doing things, that is clearly the result of habit, rather than the outgushing of the religious life. This formality will be emotionless and cold as an iceberg, and will evince a total want of earnestness in the performance of religious duty. In prayer and in religious exercises the backslider in heart will pray or praise, or confess, or give thanks with his lips, so that all can hear him, perhaps, but in such a way that no one can feel him. Such a formality would be impossible where there existed a present, living faith and love, and religious zeal.

2. A want of religious enjoyment is evidence of a backslidden heart. We always enjoy the saying and doing of those things that please those whom we most love; furthermore, when the heart is not backslidden, communion with God is kept up, and therefore all religious duties are not only performed with pleasure, but the communion with God involved in them is a source of rich and continual enjoyment. If we do not enjoy the service of God, it is because we do not truly serve Him. If we love Him supremely, it is impossible that we should not enjoy His service at every step. Always remember then, whenever you lose your religious enjoyment, or the enjoyment of serving God, you may know that you are not serving Him aright.

3. Religious bondage is another evidence of a backslidden heart. God has no slaves. He does not accept the service of bondsmen, who serve Him because they must. He accepts none but a love service. A backslider in heart finds his religious duties a burden to him. He has promised to serve the Lord. He dare not wholly break off from the form of service, and he tries to be dutiful, while he has no heart in prayer, in praise, in worship, or in any of those exercises which are so spontaneous and delightful, where there is true love to God. The backslider in heart is often like a dutiful, but unloving wife. She tries to do her duty to her husband, but fails utterly because she does not love him. Her painstaking to please her husband is constrained, not the spontaneous outburst of a loving heart; and her relationship and her duties become the burden of her life. She goes about complaining of the weight of care that is upon her, and will not be likely to advise young ladies to marry. She is committed for life, and must therefore perform the duties of married life, but it is such a bondage! Just so with religious bondage. The professor must perform his duty. He drags painfully about it, and you will hear him naturally sing backslider’s hymns:

Reason I hear, her counsels weigh, And all her words approve And yet I find it hard to obey, And harder still, to love.

4. An ungoverned temper. While the heart is full of love, the temper will naturally be chastened and sweet, or at any rate, the will keep it under, and not suffer it to break out in outrageous abuse, or if at any time it should so far escape from the control of the will as to break loose in hateful words, it will soon be brought under, and by no means suffered to take control and manifest itself to the annoyance of others. Especially will a loving heart confess and break down, if at any time bad temper gets the control.

Whenever, therefore, there is an irritable, uncontrolled temper allowed to manifest itself to those around, you may know there is a backslidden heart.

5. A spirit of uncharitableness is evidence of a backslidden heart. By this, I mean a want of that disposition that puts the best construction upon every one’s conduct that can be reasonable – a want of confidence in the good intentions and professions of others. We naturally credit the good professions of those whom we love. We naturally attribute to them right motives, and put the best allowable construction upon their words and deeds. Where there is a want of this there is evidence conclusive of a backslidden or unloving heart.

6. A censorious spirit is conclusive evidence of a backslidden heart. This is a spirit of fault-finding, of impugning the motives of others, when their conduct admits of a charitable construction. It is a disposition to fasten blame upon others, and judge them harshly. It is a spirit of distrust of Christian character and profession. It is a state of mind that reveals itself in harsh judgments, harsh sayings, and the manifestation of uncomfortable feelings toward individuals. This state of mind is entirely incompatible with a loving heart, and whenever a censorious spirit is manifested by a professor of religion, you may know there is a backslidden heart.

7. A want of interest in God’s Word, is also an evidence of a backslidden heart. Perhaps nothing more conclusively proves that a professor has a backslidden heart, than his losing his interest in the Bible. While the heart is full of love, no book in the world is so precious as the Bible. But when the love. is gone, the Bible becomes not only uninteresting but often repulsive. There is no faith to accept its promises, but conviction enough left to dread its threatening. But in general the backslider in heart is apathetic as to the Bible. He does not read it much, and when he does read it, he has not interest enough to understand it. Its pages become dark and uninteresting, and therefore it is neglected.

8. A want of interest in secret prayer is also an evidence of a backslidden heart. Young Christian, if you find yourself losing your interest in the Bible and in secret prayer, stop short, return to God, and give yourself no rest, till you enjoy the light of His countenance. If you feel disinclined to pray, or to read your Bible; if when you pray and read your Bible, you have no heart; if you are inclined to make your secret devotions short, or are easily induced to neglect them; or if your thoughts, affections, and emotions wander, you may know that you are a backslider in heart, and your first business is to be broken down before God, and to see that your love and zeal are renewed.

9. A want of interest in the conversion of souls and in efforts to promote revivals of religion. This of course reveals a backslidden heart. There is nothing in which a loving heart takes more interest than in the conversion of souls – in revivals of religion, and in efforts to promote them. 83 10. A want of interest in published accounts or narratives of revivals of religion, is also an evidence of a backslidden heart. While one retains his interest in the conversion of souls, and in revivals of religion he will, of course, be interested in all accounts of revivals of religion anywhere. If you find yourself, therefore, disinclined to read such accounts, or find yourself not interested in them, take it for granted that you are backslidden in heart.

11. The same is true of missions, and missionary work and operations. If you lose your interest in the work, and in the conversion of the heathen, and do not delight to read and hear of the success of missions, you may know that you are backslidden in heart.

12. The loss of interest in benevolent enterprises generally is an evidence of a backslidden heart. I say, “the loss of interest,” for surely, if you were ever converted to Christ, you have had an interest in all benevolent enterprises that came within your knowledge. Religion consists in disinterested benevolence. Of course, a converted soul takes the deepest interest in all benevolent efforts to reform and save mankind; in good government, in Christian education, in the cause of temperance, in the abolition of slavery, in provision for the needs of the poor, and in short, in every good word and work. Just in proportion as you have lost your interest in these, you have evidence that you are backslidden in heart.

13. The loss of interest in truly spiritual conversation is another evidence of a backslidden heart. “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh” (Matthew 12:34). This our Lord Jesus Christ announced as a law of our nature. No conversation is so sweet to a truly loving heart, as that which relates to Christ, and to our living Christian experience. If you find yourself losing interest in conversing on heart religion, and of the various and wonderful experiences of Christians, if you have known what the true love of God is, you have fallen from it, and are a backslider in heart.

14. A loss of interest in the conversation and society of highly spiritual people, is an evidence of a backslidden heart. We take the greatest delight in the society of those who are most interested in the things that are most dear to us. Hence, a loving Christian heart will always seek the society of those who are most spiritually minded, and whose conversation is most evangelical and spiritual. If you find yourself wanting in this respect, then know for certain that you are backslidden in heart.

15. The loss of interest in the question of sanctification is an evidence of a backslidden heart. I say again, the loss of interest, for, if you ever truly knew the love of God, you must have had a great interest in the question of entire consecration to God, or of entire sanctification. If you are a Christian, you have felt that sin was an abomination to your soul. You have had inexpressible longings to be rid of it forever, and everything that could throw light upon that question of agonizing importance was most intensely interesting to you. If this question has been dismissed, and you no longer take an interest in it, it is because you are backslidden in heart.

16. The loss of interest in those newly converted, is also an evidence of a backslidden heart. The Psalmist says: “They that fear Thee will be glad when they see me; because I have hoped in Thy word” (Psalm 119:74).

This he puts into the mouth of a convert, and who does not know that this is true? There is joy in the presence of the angels of God, over one sinner that repenteth, and is there not joy among the saints on earth, over those that come to Christ, and are as babes newly born into the Kingdom? Show me a professor of religion who does not manifest an absorbing interest in converts to Christ, and I will show you a backslider in heart, and a hypocrite; he professes religion, but has none.

17. An uncharitable state of mind in regard to professed converts, is also an evidence of a backslidden heart. Charity, or love, “believeth all things, hopeth all things” (1 Corinthians 13:7), is very ready to judge kindly and favorably of those who profess to be converted to Christ, and will naturally watch over them with interest, pray for them, instruct them, and have as much confidence in them as it is reasonable to have. A disposition, therefore, to pick at, criticize, and censure them, is an evidence of a backslidden heart.

18. The want of the spirit of prayer is evidence of a backslidden heart.

While the love of Christ remains fresh in the soul, the indwelling Spirit of God will reveal Himself as the Spirit of grace and supplication. He will beget strong desires in the soul for the salvation of sinners and the sanctification of saints. He will often make intercessions in them, with great longings, strong crying and tears, and with groanings that cannot he uttered in words, for those things that are according to the will of God. Or, to express it in Scripture language, according to Paul: “Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And He that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because He maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God” (Romans 8:26, 27). If the spirit of prayer departs, it is a sure indication of a backslidden heart, for while the first love of a Christian continues he is sure to be drawn by the Holy Spirit to wrestle much in prayer.

19. A backslidden heart often reveals itself by the manner in which people pray. For example, praying as if in a state of self-condemnation, or very much like a convicted sinner, is an evidence of a backslidden heart. Such a person will reveal the fact, that he is not at peace with God. His confessions and self-accusations will show to others what perhaps he does not well understand himself. His manner of praying will reveal the fact that he has not communion with God; that instead of being filled with faith and love, he is more or less convicted of sin, and conscious that he is not in a state of acceptance with God. He will naturally pray more like a convicted sinner than like a Christian. It will be seen by his prayer that he is not in a state of Christian liberty – that he is having a Seventh of Romans experience, instead of that which is described in the Eighth.

20. A backslidden heart will further reveal itself in praying almost exclusively for self, and for those friends that are regarded almost as parts of self. It is often very striking and even shocking to attend a backsliders’ prayer meeting, and I am very sorry to say that many prayer meetings of the Church are little else. Their prayers are timid and hesitating, and reveal the fact that they have little or no faith. Instead of surrounding the Throne of Grace and pouring their hearts out for a blessing on those around them, they have to be urged up to duty, to “take up their cross.” Their hearts do not, will not, spontaneously gush out to God in prayer. They have very little concern for others, and when they do, as they say, “take up their cross and do their duty,” and pretend to lead in prayer, it will be observed that they pray just like a company of convicted sinners, almost altogether for themselves. They will pray for that which, should they obtain it, would be religion, just as a convicted sinner would pray for a new heart; and the fact that they pray for religion as they do, manifests that they have none, in their present state of mind. Ask them to pray for the conversion of sinners, and they will either wholly forget to do so, or just mention sinners in such a way as will show that they have no heart to pray for them.

I have known professed Christian parents to get into such a state that they had no heart to pray for the conversion of their own children, even when those children were under conviction. They would keep up family prayer, and attend a weekly prayer meeting, but would never get out of the rut of praying round and round for themselves. A few years since I was laboring in a revival in a Presbyterian Church. At the close of the evening sermon I found that the daughter of one of the elders of the Church was in great distress of mind. I observed that her convictions were very deep. We had been holding a meeting with inquirers in the vestry, and I had just dismissed the inquirers, when this young lady came to me in great agitation and begged me to pray for her. The people had mostly gone, except a few who were waiting in the body of the church for those friends who had attended the meeting of inquiry. I called the father of this young lady into the vestry that he might see the very anxious state of his daughter’s mind.

After a short personal conversation with her in the presence of her father, I called on him to pray for her, and said that I would follow him, and I urged her to give her heart to Christ. We all knelt, and he went through with his prayer, kneeling by the side of his sobbing daughter, without ever mentioning her case. His prayer revealed that he had no more religion than she had, and that he was very much in her state of mind – under an awful sense of condemnation. He had kept up the appearance of religion. As an elder of the Church, he was obliged to keep up appearances. He had gone round and round upon the treadmill of his duties, while his heart was utterly backslidden. It is often almost nauseating to attend a prayer meeting of the backslidden in heart. They will go round, round, one after the other, in reality praying for their own conversion. They do not so express it, but that is the real import of their prayer. They could not render it more evident that they are backsliders in heart.

21. Absence from stated prayer meetings for slight reasons, is a sure indication of a backslidden heart. No meeting is more interesting to Christians than the prayer meeting, and while they have any heart to pray, they will not be absent from prayer meeting unless prevented from attending by the providence of God. If a call from a friend at the hour of meeting can prevent their attendance, unless the call is made under very peculiar circumstances, it is strong evidence that they do not wish to attend, and hence, that they are backsliders in heart. A call at such a time would not prevent their attending a wedding, a party, a picnic, or an amusing lecture. The fact is, it is hypocrisy for them to pretend that they really want to go, while they can be kept away for slight reasons.

22. The same is true of the neglect of family prayer, for slight reasons.

While the heart is engaged in religion, Christians will not readily omit family devotions, and whenever they are ready to find an excuse for the omission, it is a sure evidence that they are backslidden in heart.

23. When secret prayer is regarded more as a duty than as a privilege, it is because the heart is backslidden. It has always appeared to me almost ridiculous, to hear Christians speak of prayer as a “duty.” It is one of the greatest of earthly privileges. What should we think of a child coming to its parent for its dinner, not because it is hungry, but as a duty. How would it strike us to hear a beggar speak of the “duty” of asking alms of us. It is an infinite privilege to be allowed to come to God, and ask for the supply of all our wants. But to pray because we must, rather than because we may, seems unnatural. To ask for what we want, and because we want it, and because God has encouraged us to ask, and has promised to answer our request, is natural and reasonable. But to pray as a duty and as if we were obliging God by our prayer, is quite ridiculous, and is a certain indication of a backslidden heart.

24. Pleading for worldly amusements is also an indication of a backslidden heart. The most grateful amusements possible, to a truly spiritual mind, are those engagements that bring the soul into the most direct communion with God. While the heart is full of love and faith, an hour, or an evening, spent alone in communion with God, is more delightful than all the amusements which the world can offer. A loving heart is jealous of everything that will break up or interfere with its communion with God.

For mere worldly amusements it has no relish. When the soul does not find more delight in God than in all worldly things, the heart is sadly backslidden.

25. Spiritual blindness is another evidence of a backslidden heart. While the eye is single the whole body will be full of spiritual light, but if the eye be evil (which means a backslidden heart) the whole body will be full of darkness.

Spiritual blindness reveals itself in a want of interest in God’s Word, and in religious truth generally. It will also manifest a want of spiritual discrimination, and will be easily imposed upon by the insinuations of Satan. A backslidden heart will lead to the adoption of lax principles of morality. It does not discern the spirituality of God’s law, and of His requirements generally. When this spiritual blindness is manifest it is a sure indication that the heart is backslidden.

26. Religious apathy, with worldly wakefulness and sensibility, is a sure indication of a backslidden heart. We sometimes see persons who feel deeply and quickly on worldly subjects, but who cannot be made to feel deeply on religious subjects. This clearly indicates a backslidden state of mind.

27. A self-indulgent spirit is a sure indication of a backslidden heart. By self-indulgence, I mean a disposition to gratify the appetites, passions, and propensities, to “fulfill the desires of the flesh and of the mind”

(Ephesians 2:3).

This, in the Bible, is represented as a state of spiritual death. I am satisfied that the most common occasion of backsliding in heart is to be found in the clamor for indulgence of the various appetites and propensities. The appetite for food is frequently, and perhaps more frequently than any other, the occasion of backsliding. Few Christians, I fear, apprehend any danger in this direction. God’s injunction is: “Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). Christians forget this, and eat and drink to please themselves, consulting their appetites instead of the laws of life and health. More persons are ensnared by their tables than the Church is aware of. The table is a snare of death to multitudes that no man can number. A great many people who avoid alcoholic drinks altogether, will indulge in tea and coffee, and even tobacco, and in food that, both in quantity and quality, violates every law of health. They seem to have no other law than that of appetite, and this they so deprave by abuse that, to indulge it, is to ruin body and soul together. Show me a gluttonous professor, and I will show you a backslider.

28. A seared conscience is also an evidence of a backslidden heart. While the soul is wakeful and loving, the conscience is as tender as the apple of the eye. But when the heart is backslidden, the conscience is silent and seared, on many subjects. Such a person will tell you that he is not violating his conscience, in eating or drinking, or in self-indulgence of any kind. You will find a backslider has but little conscience. The same will very generally be true in regard to sins of omission. Multitudes of duties may be neglected and a seared conscience will remain silent. Where conscience is not awake, the heart is surely backslidden.

29. Loose moral principles are a sure indication of a backslidden heart. A backslider in heart will write letters on the Sabbath, engage in secular reading, and in much worldly conversation. In business, such a person will take little advantages, play off business tricks, and conform to the habits of worldly business men in the transaction of business; he will be guilty of deception and misrepresentation in making bargains, will demand exorbitant interest, and take advantage of the necessities of his fellow-men.

30. Prevalence of the fear of man is an evidence of a backslidden heart.

While the heart is full of the love of God, God is feared, and not man. A desire for the applause of men is kept down, and it is enough to please God, whether men are pleased or displeased. But when the love of God is abated, “the fear of man,” that “bringeth a snare” (Proverbs 29:25), gets possession of the backslider. To please man rather than God, is then his aim. In such a state he will sooner offend God than man.

31. A sticklish ness about forms, ceremonies, and nonessentials, gives evidence of a backslidden heart. A loving heart is particular only about the substance and power of religion, and will not stickle about its forms.

32. A captiousness about measures in promoting revivals of religion, is a sure evidence of a backslidden heart. Where the heart is fully set upon the conversion of sinners and the sanctification of believers, it will naturally approach the subject in the most direct manner, and by means in the highest degree calculated to accomplish the end. It will not object to, nor stumble at, measures that are evidently blessed of God, but will exert the utmost sagacity in devising the most suitable means to accomplish the great end on which the heart is set.

IV. THE CONSEQUENCES OF BACKSLIDING IN HEART.

The text says, that “the backslider in heart shall be filled with his own ways.”

1. He shall be filled with his own works. But these are dead works, they are not works of faith and love, which are acceptable to God, but are the filthy rags of his own righteousness. If they are performed as religious services, they are but loathsome hypocrisy, and an abomination to God; there is no heart in them. To such a person God says: “Who hath required this at your hand?” (Isaiah 1:12). “Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God” (Luke 16:15). “I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you” (John 5:42).

2. He shall be filled with his own feelings. Instead of that sweet peace and rest, and joy in the Holy Ghost, that he once experienced, he will find himself in a state of unrest, dissatisfied with himself and everybody else, his feelings often painful, humiliating, and as unpleasant and unlovely as can be well conceived. It is often very trying to live with backsliders. They are often peevish, censorious, and irritating, in all their ways. They have forsaken God, and in their feelings there is more of hell than of heaven.

3. They will be filled with their own prejudices. Their willingness to know and do the truth has gone. They will very naturally commit themselves against any truth that bears hardly upon a self-indulgent spirit. They will endeavor to justify themselves, will neither read nor hear that which will rebuke their backslidden state, and they will become deeply prejudiced against every one that shall cross their path, who shall reprove them, accounting him as an enemy. They hedge themselves in, and shut their eyes against the light; stand on the defensive, and criticize everything that would search them out.

4. A backslider in heart will be filled with his own enmities. He will chafe in almost every relation of life, will allow himself to be vexed, and to get into such relations with some persons, and perhaps with many, that he cannot pray for them honestly, and can hardly treat them with common civility. This is an almost certain result of a backslidden heart.

5. The backslider in heart will be full of his own mistakes. He is not walking with God. He has fallen out of the Divine order. He is not led by the Spirit, but is walking in spiritual darkness. In this state he is sure to fall into many and grievous mistakes, and may get entangled in such a way as to mar his happiness, and, perhaps, destroy his usefulness for life.

Mistakes in business, mistakes in forming new relations in life, mistakes in using his time, his tongue, his money, his influence; indeed, all will go wrong with him as long as he remains in a backslidden state.

6. The backslider in heart will be filled with his own lustings. His appetites and passions, which had been kept under, have now resumed their control, and having been so long suppressed, they will seem to avenge themselves by becoming more clamorous and despotic than ever.

The animal appetites and passions will burst forth, to the astonishment of the backslider, and he will probably find himself more under their influence and more enslaved by them than ever before.

7. The backslider in heart will be filled with his own words. While in that state, he will not, and cannot, control his tongue. It will prove itself to be an unruly member, full of deadly poison. By his words he will involve himself in many difficulties and perplexities, from which he can never extricate himself until he comes back to God.

8. He will be full of his own trials. Instead of keeping out of temptation, he will run right into it. He will bring upon himself multitudes of trials that he never would have had, had he not departed from God. He will complain of his trials, but yet will constantly multiply them. A backslider feels his trials keenly, but, while he complains of being so tried by everything around him, he is constantly aggravating them, and, being the author of them, he seems industrious to bring them upon himself like an avalanche.

9. The backslider in heart shall be full of his own folly. Having rejected the Divine guidance, he will evidently fall into the depths of his own foolishness. He will inevitably say and do multitudes of foolish and ridiculous things. Being a professor of religion, these things will be all the more noticed, and of course bring him all the more into ridicule and contempt. A backslider is, indeed, the most foolish person in the world.

Having experimental knowledge of the true way of life, he has the infinite folly to abandon it. Knowing the fountain of living waters, he has forsaken it, and “hewed out to himself cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water” (Jeremiah 2:13). Having been guilty of this infinite folly, the whole course of his backslidden life must be that of a fool, in the Bible sense of the term.

10. The backslider in heart will be full of his own troubles. God is against him, and he is against himself. He is not at peace with God, with himself, with the Church, nor with the world. He has no inward rest. Conscience condemns him. God condemns him. All that know his state condemn him.

“There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked” (Isaiah 57:21). There is no position in time or space in which he can be at rest.

11. The backslider in heart will be full of his own cares. He has turned back to selfishness. He counts himself and his possessions as his own. He has everything to care for. He will not hold himself and his possessions as belonging to God, and lay aside the responsibility of taking care of himself and all that he possesses. He does not, will not, cast his cares upon the Lord, but undertakes to manage everything for himself, and in his own wisdom, and for his own ends. Consequently, his cares will be multiplied, and come upon him like a deluge.

12. The backslider in heart will be full of his own perplexities. Having forsaken God, having fallen into the darkness of his own folly, he will be filled with perplexities and doubts in regard to what course he shall pursue to accomplish his selfish ends. He is not walking with, but contrary to God. Hence, the providence of God will constantly cross his path, and baffle all his schemes. God will frown darkness upon his path, and take pains to confound his projects, and blow his schemes to the winds.

13. The backslider in heart will be filled with his own anxieties. He will be anxious about himself, about his business, about his reputation, about everything. He has taken all these things out of the hands of God, and claims them and treats them as his own. Hence, having faith in God no longer, and being unable to control events, he must of necessity be filled with anxieties with regard to the future. These anxieties are the inevitable result of his madness and folly in forsaking God.

14. The backslider in heart will be filled with his own disappointments.

Having forsaken God, and taken the attitude of self-will, God will inevitably disappoint him as he pursues his selfish ends. He will frame his ways to please himself, without consulting God. Of course God will frame his ways so as to disappoint him. Determined to have his own way, he will be greatly disappointed if his plans are frustrated; yet the certain course of events under the government of God must of necessity bring him a series of disappointments.

15. The backslider in heart must be full of his own losses. He regards his possessions as his own, his time as his own, his influence as his own, his reputation as his own. The loss of any of these, he accounts as his own loss. Having forsaken God, and being unable to control the events upon which the continuance of those things is conditioned, he will find himself suffering losses on every side. He loses his peace. He loses his property.

He loses much of his time. He loses his Christian reputation. He loses his Christian influence, and if he persists he loses his soul.

16. The backslider in heart will be full of his own crosses. All religious duty will be irksome, and, therefore, a cross to him. His state of mind will make multitudes of things crosses that in a Christian state of mind would have been pleasant in a high degree. Having lost all heart in religion, the performance of all religious duty is a cross to his feelings. There is no help for him, unless he returns to God. The whole course of Divine providence will run across his path, and his whole life will be a series of crosses and trials. He cannot have his own way. He cannot gratify himself by accomplishing his own wishes and desires. He may beat and dash himself against the everlasting rocks of God’s will and God’s way, but break through and carry all before him he cannot. He must be crossed and recrossed, and crossed again, until he will fall into the Divine order, and sink into the will of God.

17. The backslider in heart will be filled with his own tempers. Having forsaken God, he will be sure to have much to irritate him. In a backslidden state, he cannot possess his soul in patience. The vexations of his backslidden life will make him nervous and irritable; his temper will become explosive and uncontrollable.

18. The backslider in heart will be full of his own disgraces. He is a professor of religion. The eyes of the world are upon him, and all his inconsistencies, worldly-mindedness, follies, bad tempers, and hateful words and deeds, disgrace him in the estimation of all men who know him.

19. The backslider in heart will be full of his own delusions. Having an evil eye, his whole body will be full of darkness. He will almost certainly fall into delusions in regard to doctrines and in regard to practices. Wandering on in darkness, as he does, he will, very likely, swallow the grossest delusions. Spiritism, Mormonism, Universalism, and every other ism that is wide from the truth, will be very likely to gain possession of him. Who has not observed this of backsliders in heart?

20. The backslider in heart will be filled with his own bondage. His profession of religion brings him into bondage to the Church. He has no heart to consult the interests of the Church, or to labor for its up-building, and yet he is under covenant obligation to do so, and his reputation is at stake. He must do something to sustain religious institutions, but to do so is a bondage. If he does it, it is because he must, and not because he may.

Again, he is in bondage to God. If he performs any duty that he calls religious, it is rather as a slave than as a freeman. He serves from fear or hope, just like a slave, and not from love. A gain, he is in bondage to his own conscience. To avoid conviction and remorse, he will do or omit many things, but it is all with reluctance, and not at all of his own cordial goodwill.

21. The backslider in heart is full of his own self condemnation. Having enjoyed the love of God, and forsaken Him, he feels condemned for everything. If he attempts religious duty, he knows there is no heart in it, and hence condemns himself. If he neglects religious duty, he of course condemns himself. If he reads his Bible, it condemns him. If he does not read it, he feels condemned. If he goes to religious meetings, they condemn him; and if he stays away, he is condemned also. If he prays in secret, in his family, or in public, he knows he is not sincere, and feels condemned.

If he neglects or refuses to pray, he feels condemned. Everything condemns him. His conscience is up in arms against him, and the thunders and lightnings of condemnation follow him, whithersoever he goes.

V. HOW TO RECOVER FROM A STATE OF BACKSLIDING.

1. Remember whence you are fallen. Take up the question at once, and deliberately contrast your present state with that in which you walked with God.

2. Take home the conviction of your true position. No longer delay to understand the exact situation between God and your soul.

3. Repent at once, and do your first works over again.

4. Do not attempt to get back, by reforming your mere outside conduct.

Begin with your heart, and at once set yourself right with God.

5. Do not act like a more convicted sinner, and attempt to recommend yourself to God by any impenitent works or prayers. Do not think that you must “reform, and make yourself better” before you can come to Christ, but understand distinctly, that coming to Christ, alone, can make you better. However much distressed you may feel, know for a certainty that until you repent and accept His will, unconditionally, you are no better, but are constantly growing worse. Until you throw yourself upon His sovereign mercy, and thus return to God, He will accept nothing at your hands.

6. Do not imagine yourself to be in a justified state, for you know you are not. Your conscience condemns you, and you know that God ought to condemn you, and if He justified you in your present state, your conscience could not justify Him. Come, then, to Christ at once, like a guilty, condemned sinner, as you are; own up, and take all the shame and blame to yourself, and believe that notwithstanding all your wanderings from God, He loves you still – that He has loved you with an everlasting love, and, therefore, with loving-kindness is drawing you.

October 13, 2013 by kevinstilley

A Blow At Self-Righteousness

A Sermon of Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Delivered, December 16th, 1860,
At Exeter Hall, Strand.

“If I justify myself, mine own mouth shall condemn me: if I say, I am perfect, it shall also prove me perverse.”—Job 9:20.

EVER since man became a sinner he has been self-righteous. When he had a righteousness of his own he never gloried of it, but ever since he has lost it, he has pretended to be the possessor of it. Those proud words which our father Adam uttered, when he sought to screen himself from the guilt of his treason against his Maker, laying the blame apparently on Eve, but really upon God who gave him the woman, were virtually a claim to blamelessness. It was but a fig leaf he could find to cover his nakedness, but how proud was he of that fig-leaf excuse, and how tenaciously did he hold to it. As it was with our first parents so is it with us: self-righteousness is born with us, and there is perhaps no sin which has so much vitality in it as the sin of righteous self. We can overcome lust itself, and anger, and the fierce passions of the will better than we can ever master the proud boastfulness which rises in our hearts and tempts us to think ourselves rich and increased in goods, while God knoweth we are naked, and poor, and miserable. Tens of thousands of sermons have been preached against self-righteousness, and yet it is as necessary to turn the great guns of the law against its walls to-day as ever it was. Martin Luther said he scarcely ever preached a sermon without inveighing against the righteousness of man, and yet, he said, “I find that still I cannot preach it down. Still men will boast in what they can do, and mistake the path to heaven to be a road paved by their own merits, and not a way besprinkled by the blood of the atonement of Jesus Christ.” My dear hearers, I cannot compliment you by imagining that all of you have been delivered from the great delusion of trusting in yourselves. The godly, those who are righteous through faith in Christ, still have to mourn that this infirmity clings to them; while as to the unconverted themselves, their besetting sin is to deny their guiltiness, to plead that they are as good as others, and to indulge still the vain and foolish hope that they shall enter into heaven from some doings, sufferings, or weepings of their own. I do not suppose there are any who are self-righteous in as bold a sense as the poor countryman I have heard of. His minister had tried to explain to him the way of salvation, but either his head was very dull, or else his soul was very hostile to the truth the minister would impart; for he so little understood what he had heard, that when the question was put, “Now then, what is the way by which you hope you can be saved before God?” the poor honest simpleton said, “Do you not think sir, if I were to sleep one cold frosty night under a hawthorn bush, that would go a great way towards it?” conceiving that his suffering might, in some degree at least, assist him in getting into heaven. You would not state your opinion in so bold a manner; you would refine it, you would gild it, you would disguise it, but it would come to the same thing after all; you would still believe that some sufferings, or believings of your own might possibly merit salvation. The Romish Church indeed, often tells this so very plainly, that we cannot think it less than profanity. I have been informed that there is in one of the Romish chapels in Cork, a monument bearing these words upon it, “I. H. S. Sacred to the memory of the benevolent Edward Molloy; a friend of humanity, the father of the poor; he employed the wealth of this world only to procure the riches of the next; and leaving a balance of merit in the book of life, he made heaven debtor to mercy. He died October 17th, 1818, aged 90.” I do not suppose that any of you will have such an epitaph on your tombstones, or ever dream of putting it as a matter of account with God, and striking a balance with him, your sins being on one side and your righteousness on the other, and hoping that a balance might remain. And yet the very same idea, only not so honestly expressed—a little more guarded, and a little more refined—the same idea, only taught to speak after a gospel dialect—is inherent in us all, and only divine grace can thoroughly cast it out of us.

The sermon of this morning is intended to be another blow against our self-righteousness. If it will not die, at least let us spare no arrows against it; let us draw the bow, and if the shaft cannot penetrate its heart, it may at least stick in its flesh and help to worry it to its grave.

I. Endeavouring to keep close to my text, I shall start with this first point—that THE PLEA OF SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS CONTRADICTS ITSELF. “If I justify myself, mine own mouth shall condemn me.”

Come, friend, thou who dost justify thyself by thine own works, let me hear thee speak. “I say that I have no need of a salvation by the blood and righteousness of another, for I believe that I have kept the commands of God from my youth up, and I do not think that I am guilty in his sight, but I hope that I may be able in my own right to claim a seat in paradise.” Now, sir, your plea and this declaration of yours is in itself a condemnation of you, because upon its very surface it is apparent that you are committing sin while you are pleading that you have no sin. For the very plea itself is a piece of high and arrogant presumption. God hath said it, let Jew and Gentile stop his mouth, and let all the world stand guilty before God. We have it on inspired authority, that “there is none righteous, no, not one.” “There is none good, save one, that is God.” We are told by the mouth of a prophet sent from God, that “all we like wandering sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way.” And thou, in saying that thou art righteous, dost commit the sin of calling God a liar. Thou hast dared to impugn his veracity, thou hast slandered his justice. This boast of thine is in itself a sin, so great, so heinous, that if thou hadst only that one sin to account for, it would be sufficient to sink thee to the lowest hell. The boast, I say, is in itself a sin; the moment that a man saith, “I have no sin,” he commits a sin in the saying of it,—the sin of contradicting his Maker, and making God a false accuser of his creatures.

Besides, dost thou not see, thou vain and foolish creature, that thou hast been guilty of pride in the very language thou hast used? Who but a proud man would stand up and commend himself? Who, but one who was proud as Lucifer, would in the face of God’s declaration declare himself to be just and holy? Did the best of men ever speak thus? Did they not all of them acknowledge that they were guilty? Did Job, of whom God said that he was a perfect and an upright man, claim perfection? Did he not say, “If I justify myself, mine own mouth shall condemn me?” Oh! proud wretch, how art thou puffed up! How hath Satan bewitched thee; how hath he made thee lift up thine horn on high and speak with a stiff neck. Take heed to thyself, for if thou hadst never been guilty before, this pride of thine were quite sufficient to draw Jehovah’s thunderbolts out of the quiver, and make him smite thee once for all to thine eternal destruction.

But further, the plea of self-righteousness is self-contradictory upon another ground; for all that a self-righteous man pleads for, is comparative righteousness. “Why,” saith he, “I am no worse than my neighbours, in fact a great deal better; I do not drink, or swear; I do not commit fornication or adultery; I am no Sabbath breaker; I am no thief; the laws of my country do not accuse, much less condemn me; I am better than the most of men, and if I be not saved, God help those who are worse than I am; if I cannot enter the kingdom of heaven, then who can?” Just so, but then all that you claim is that you are righteous as compared with others. Do you not see that this is a very vain and fatal plea, because you do in fact admit that you are not perfectly righteous;—that there is some sin in you, only you claim there is not so much in you as in another. You admit that you are diseased, but then the plague-spot is not so apparent in you as in your fellow-man. You admit that you have robbed God and broken his laws, only you have not done it with so desperate an intent, nor with so many aggravations as others. Now this is virtually a plea of guilty, disguise it as you may. You admit that you have been guilty, and against you the sentence comes forth—”The soul that sinneth it shall die.” Take heed to thyself that thou find no shelter in this refuge of lies, for it shall certainly fail thee when God shall come to judge the world with righteousness and the people with equity.

Suppose now for a moment that a command is issued to the beasts of the forest that they should become sheep. It is quite in vain for the bear to come forward and plead that he was not so venomous a creature as the serpent; equally absurd would it be for the wolf to say that though stealthy and cunning, and gaunt, and grim, yet he was not so great a grumbler not so ugly a creature as the bear; and the lion might plead that he had not the craftiness of the fox. “It is true,” saith he, “I wet my tongue in blood, but then I have some virtues which may commend me, and which, in fact, have made me king of beasts.” What would this argument avail? The indictment is that these animals are not sheep, their plea against the indictment is that they are no less like sheep than other creatures, and that some of them have more gentleness and more docility than others of their kind. The plea would never stand. Or use another picture. If in the courts of justice, a thief, when called up, should argue, “Well, I am not so great a thief as some; there are to be found some living in Whitechapel or St. Giles’s who have been thieves longer than I have, and if there be one conviction in the book against me, there are some that have a dozen convictions against them.” No magistrate would acquit a man on such an excuse as that, because it would be tantamount to his admission of a degree of guilt, though he might try to excuse himself because he had not reached a higher degree. It is so with you, sinner. You have sinned. Another man’s sins cannot excuse you; you must stand upon your own feet. At the day of judgment you must yourself make a personal appearance, and it will not be what another man has done that will condemn, or acquit you, but your own personal guilt. Take heed, then, take heed, sinner; for it will not avail thee that there are others blacker than thyself. If there be but a spot upon thee thou art lost; if there be but one sin unwashed by Jesus’ blood, thy portion must be with the tormentors. A holy God cannot look even upon the least degree of iniquity.

But further, the plea of the self-conceited man is, that he has done his best, and can claim a partial righteousness. It is true, if you touch him in a tender place he acknowledges that his boyhood and his youth were stained with sin. He tells you that in his early days he was a “fast lad;” that he did many things which he is sorry for now. “But then,” says he, “these are only like spots in the sun; these are only like a small headland of waste ground in acres of fruitful soil; I am still good; I am still righteous, because my virtues exceed my vices, and my good deeds quite cover up all the mistakes that I have committed.” Well, sir, do you not see that the only righteousness you claim is a partial righteousness? and in that very claim you do in fact make an admission that you are not perfect; that you have committed some sins. Now I am not responsible for what I am about to state, nor am I to be blamed for harshness in it, because I state neither more nor less than the very truth of God. It is of no saving avail to you that you have not have committed ten thousand sins, for if you have committed one, you are a lost soul. The law is to be kept intact and entire, and the least crack, or flaw, or breakage, spoils it. The robe of righteousness in which you must stand at last must be without spot or blemish, and if there be but one microscopic stain upon it, which is supposing what is never true, yet, even then the gates of heaven never can admit you. A perfect righteousness you must have, or else you shall never be admitted to that wedding feast. You may say, “I have kept such a commandment and have never broken it,” but if you have broken another you are guilty of the whole, because the whole law is like one rich and costly vase—it is one in design and fashion. Though you break not the foor, and stain not the margin, yet if there be any flaw or damage, the whole vessel is marred. And so if you have sinned in any point, at any time, and in any degree, you have broken the whole law; you stand guilty of it before God, nor can you be saved by the works of the law, do what you may.

“It is a hard sentence,” says one, “and who can bear it!” Indeed, who can bear it? Who can bear to stand at the foot of Sinai and hear its thunders roar? “If so much as a beast touch the mountain it must be stoned or thrust through with a dart.” Who can stand when the lightnings flash and God descends upon Mount Paran and the hills melt like wax beneath his feet? “By the deeds of the law there shall no flesh living be justified.” “Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things that are written in the law to do them.” Cursed is the man who sins but once, yea, hopelessly cursed so far as the law is concerned. Oh! sinner, I cannot help turning aside from the subject for a moment to remind you that there is a way of salvation, and a way by which the law’s demands can be fully satisfied. Christ bore all the punishment of all believers, so that they cannot be punished. Christ kept the law of God for believers, and he is willing to cast about any and every penitent sinner that perfect robe of righteousness which he himself has wrought out. But you cannot keep the law, and if you bring up your self-righteousness the law condemns both it and you; Out of your own mouth it condemns you, inasmuch as you have not done all things and have not kept all the law. A great rock lies in your path to heaven; a mountain insurmountable; a gulf impassable; and by that road no man shall ever enter into eternal life.

The plea of self-righteousness, then, is in itself self-contradicting, and has only to be fairly stated to an honest man for him to see that it will not hold water for a single moment. What need of laboured argument to disprove a self-evident lie? Why should we tarry longer? Who but a very fool would maintain a notion which flies in its own face and witnesses against itself?

II. But now I pass to the second point, THE MAN WHO USES THIS PLEA CONDEMNS THE PLEA HIMSELF.

Not only does the plea cut its own throat, but the man himself is aware when he uses it that it is an evil, and false, and vain refuge. Now this is a matter of conscience, and therefore I must deal plainly with you; and if I speak not what you have felt, then you can say I am mistaken; but if I speak what you must confess to be true, let it be as the very voice of God to you. Men know that they are guilty. The conscience of the proudest man, when it is allowed to speak, tells him that he deserves the wrath of God. He may brag in public, but the very loudness of his bragging proves that he has an uneasy conscience, and therefore he makes a mighty din in order to drown its voice. Whenever I hear an infidel saying hard things of Christ, it reminds me of the men of Moloch, who beat the drums that they might not hear the screams of their own children. These loud blasphemies, these braggart boastings, are only a noisy way of drowing the shrieks of conscience. Do not believe that these men are honest. I think all controversy with them is time thrown away. I would never controvert with a thief about the principles of honesty, or with a known adulterer concerning the duty of chastity. Devils are not to be reasoned with, but to be cast out. Parleying with hell serves no one’s turn except the devil’s. Did Paul argue with Elymas? or Peter with Simon Magus? I would not cross swords with a man who says there is no God; he knows there is a God. When a man laughs at Holy Scripture, you need not argue with him; he is either a fool or a knave—perhaps both. However villainous he may be, his conscience has some light; he knows that what he speaks is untrue. I cannot believe that conscience is so dead in any man as to let him believe that he is speaking the truth when he denies the Godhead; and much more I am certain that conscience never did give assent to the utterance of the braggart, who says he deserves eternal life, or has no sin of which to repent, or which by repentance may be washed away without the blood of Christ; he knows within himself that he speaks that which is false. When Professor Webster was shut up in prison for murder, he complained to the prison authorities that he had been insulted by his fellow-prisoners, for he said that through the walls of the prison he could hear them always crying out to him, “Thou bloody man! thou bloody man!” As it was not consistent with law that one prisoner should insult another, the strictest inquiry was made, and it was found that no prisoner had ever said such a word, or that if he had said it, Webster could not have heard it. It was his own conscience; it was not a word coming through the walls of the prison, but an echo reverberating from the wall of his bad heart, as conscience shouted, “Thou bloody man! thou bloody man!” There is in all your hearts a witness who will not cease his testimony; it cries, “Thou sinful man! thou sinful man!” You have only to listen to it, and you will soon find that every pretence of being saved by your good works must crumble to the ground. Oh! hear it now, and listen to it for a moment. I am sure my conscience says, “Thou sinful man! thou sinful man!” and I think yours must say the same, unless you are given up of God, and left to a seared conscience to perish in your sins.

When men get alone, if in their loneliness the thought of death forces itself upon them, they boast no more of goodness. It is not easy for a man to lie on his bed seeing the naked face of death, not at a distance, but feeling that his breath is breathing upon the skeleton, and that he must soon pass through the iron gates of death—it is not easy for a man to plead his self-righteousness then. The bony fingers thrust themselves like daggers into his proud flesh. “Ah!” saith Death, in tones which cannot be heard by mortal ear, but which are listened to by the mortal heart—”Where now are all thy glories?” He looks upon the man, and the wreath of laurel that was upon his brow fades and falls to the earth like blasted flowers. He touches his breast, and the star of honour which he wore moulders and is quenched into darkness. He looks at him yet again—that breast-plate of self-righteousness which glittered upon him like golden mail, suddenly dissolves unto dust, like the apples of Sodom before the touch of the gatherer, and the man finds himself to his own surprise naked, and poor, and miserable, when most he needed to be rich, when most he required to be happy and to be blessed. Ay, sinner, even while this sermon is being uttered, you may seek to refute it to yourself, and say, “Well, I believe I am as good as others, and that this fuss about a new birth, imputed righteousness, and being washed in blood, is all unnecessary,” but in the loneliness of your silent chamber, especially when death shall be your dread and grim companion, you shall not need me to state this, you shall see it clearly enough yourselves; see it with eyes of horror; and feel it with a heart of dismay, and despair, and perish because thou hast despised the righteousness of Christ.

How abundantly true, however, will this be at the day of judgment. I think I see that day of fire, that day of wrath. You are gathered as a great multitude before the eternal throne. Those who are robed in Christ’s fine linen, which is the righteousness of the saints, are caught up to the right hand. And now the trumpet sounds; if there be any that have kept the law of God, if there be faultless ones, if there be any that have never sinned, let them stand forth and claim the promised reward; but, if not, let the pit engulph the sinner, let the fiery thunder-bolt be launched upon the impenitent offenders. Now, stand forth, sir, and clear thyself! Come forth, my friend, and claim the reward, because of the church you endowed, or the row of alms-houses that you erected. What! what! does your tongue lie dumb in your mouth? Come forward, come forward—you who said you had been a good citizen, had fed the hungry, and clothed the naked—come forward now, and claim the reward. What! what! is your face turned to whiteness? Is there an ashy paleness on your cheek? Come forward, ye multitudes of those who rejected Christ, and despised his blood. Come now, and say, “All the commandments have I kept from my youth up.” What! are you seized with horror? Has the better light of judgment driven out the darkness of your self-righteousness? Oh! I see you, I see you, ye are not boasting now; but you, the best of you, are crying, “Ye rocks, hide me; ye mountains, open your stony bowels; and let me hide myself from the face of him that sits upon the throne.” Why, why such a coward? Come, face it out before your Maker. Come up, infidel, now, tell God there is no God. Come, while hell is flaming in your nostrils; come, and say there is no hell; or tell the Almighty that you never could bear to hear a hell-fire sermon preached. Come now, and accuse the minister of cruelty, or say that we love to talk on these terrible themes. Let me not mock you in your misery; but let me picture to you how devils shall mock you. “Aha!” say they “where is your courage now? Are your ribs of iron and your bones of brass? Will you dare the Almighty now, and dash yourselves upon the bosses of his buckler, or run upon his glittering spear?” See them, see them as they sink! The gulf has swallowed them up; the earth has closed again, and they are gone; a solemn silence falls upon the ear. But hark below, if you could descend with them, you would hear their doleful groans, and hollow moans, as they now feel that the God omnipotent was right and just, and wise, and tender, when he bade them forsake their righteousness, and flee to Christ, and lay hold on him that can save to the uttermost them that come unto God by him.

III. THE PLEA IS ITSELF EVIDENCE AGAINST THE PLEADER.

There is an unregenerated man here, who says, “Am I blind also?” I answer in the words of Jesus, “But now ye say we see, therefore your sin remaineth.” You have proved by your plea, in the first place, that you have never been enlightened of the Holy Spirit, but that you remain in a state of ignorance. A deaf man may declare that there is no such thing as music. A man who has never seen the stars, is very likely to say that there are no stars. But what does he prove? Does he prove that there are no stars? He only proves his own folly and his own ignorance. That man who can say half a word about his own righteousness has never been enlightened of God the Holy Spirit; for one of the first signs of a renewed heart is, that it abhors itself in dust and ashes. If thou dost to-day feel thyself to be guilty, and lost, and ruined, there is the richest hope for thee in the gospel; but if thou sayest, “I am good, I have merits,” the law condemns thee, and the gospel cannot comfort thee; thou art in the gall of bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity, and thou art ignorant that all the while thou art talking thus, the wrath of God abideth on thee. A man may be a true Christian, and may fall into sin, but a man cannot be a true Christian and boast in his self-righteousness. A man may be saved, though infirmity may bespatter him with much mire; but he cannot be saved who does not know that he has been in the filth, and is not willing to confess that he is guilty before God. There are, in one sense, no conditions of salvation on our part, for whatever may be conditions God gives; but thus I know, there never was a man yet who was in a state of grace who did not know himself, in himself, to be in a state of ruin, a state of depravity and condemnation. If you do not know this, then I say your plea of self-righteousness condemns you for ignorance.

But then again, inasmuch as you say that you are not guilty, this proves that you are impenitent. Now the impenitent can never come where God is. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins;” “but if we say that we have no sins, we make God a liar, and the truth is not in us.” God will pardon all men who confess their iniquity. If we weep and lament, and take with us words, and say, “We have grievously sinned, forgive us—we have greatly erred, have mercy upon us, through Jesus Christ,” God will not refuse the cry; but if we, out of our impenitent and hard hearts, put ourselves upon God’s justice, God will give us justice, but not mercy, and that justice shall be the meting out to us of the full vials of his indignation, and of his wrath for ever and ever. He that is self-righteous is impenitent, and therefore he is not, and cannot be saved.

Further than this, the self-righteous man, the moment that he says he has done anything which can recommend him to God, proves that he is not a believer. Now, salvation is for believers, and for believers only. “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; he that believeth not shall be damned.” Sir, you will be damned with all your self-righteousness, and your self-righteousness shall be like Dejanira’s tunic, which she gave to Hercules, and which he put upon him, and, as the old fable hath it, it became a robe of fire to him; he tried to drag it away, but he pulled away pieces of his living, quivering flesh each moment, and perished miserably. Such shall your self-righteousness be to you. It seems a pleasant draught, and intoxicates for the moment; it is deadly and damnable as the venom of asps, and as the wine of Gomorrah. O soul! would that thou wouldst flee, above all things, from self-righteousness; for a self-righteous man does not and cannot trust Christ, and therefore he cannot see the face of God. None but the naked man will ever go to Christ for clothing; none but the hungry men will ever take Christ to be his food; none but thirsty souls will ever come to this well of Bethlehem to drink. The thirsty are welcome; but those who think they are good, are welcome neither to Sinai nor to Calvary. They have no hope of heaven, no peace in this world, nor in that which is to come.

Ah! soul, I know not who thou art; but if thou hast any righteousness of thine own, thou art a graceless soul. If you have given all your goods to feed the poor; if you have built many and many a sanctuary; if you have gone about with self-denial among the houses of poverty to visit the sons and daughters of affliction; if you have fasted thrice in the week; if your prayers have been so long that your throat has become hoarse through your crying; if your tears have been so many that your eyes have become blinded through your weeping; if your readings of Scripture have been so long that the midnight oil has been consumed in abundance;—if, I say, your heart has been so tender towards the poor and the sick and the needy that you would have been willing to suffer with them, to bear all their loathsome diseases, nay, if adding all this you could give your body to be burned, yet if you trusted in any one of these things your damnation would be as sure as though you were thief or drunkard. Understand me, I mean what I say. I want you not to think I speak unguardedly now. Christ said of the Pharisees of old the very thing that I have said of you. They were good and excellent in their way; but, said he, the publicans and harlots enter the kingdom of God before you, because they would go the wrong way, while the poor publicans and harlots were led to go the right way. The Pharisee who went about to make a righteousness of his own, did not submit to the righteousness of Christ; the publican and the harlot, knowing that they had nothing whereof to glory, came to Christ and took him as he was, and gave their souls up to be saved by his grace. Oh! that we may do the same; for until we get rid of self-righteousness we are in a state of condemnation, and dying, the sentence must be executed upon us for ever and ever.

IV. I close now upon the last point, namely, that this plea, if we retain it, not only accuses the pleader now, but IT WILL RUIN THE PLEADER FOR EVER.

Let me show you two suicides. There is a man who has sharpened a dagger, and seeking out his opportunity he stabs himself to the heart. There he falls. Who shall blame any man for his death? He slew himself; his blood be on his own head.

Here is another: he is very sick and ill; he can scarcely crawl about the streets. A physician waits upon him; he tells him, “Sir, your disease is deadly; you must die; but I know a remedy which will certainly heal you. There it is; I freely give it to you. All I ask of you is, that you will freely take it.” “Sir,” says the man, “you insult me; I am as well as ever I was in my life; I am not sick.” “But,” says the other, “there are certain signs which I mark in your countenance which prove to me that you will have a deadly disease about you, and I warn you.” The man thinks a moment; remembers that there have been certain signs in him of this very sickness; a monitor within tells him that it is so. He obstinately replies to the physician a second time—”Sir, if I want your physic I will send for it, and if I need it I will pay for it.” He knows all the while there is not a farthing in his pocket, and that he cannot get credit anywhere; and there stands the life-giving cup before him which the physician at great expense has obtained, but which he freely gives to him and bids him freely take. “No,” says the man, “I will not take it; I may be somewhat sick, but I am not worse than my neighbours; I am not more ill than other people, and I shall not take it.” One day you go to his bed and you find he has slept his last sleep, and there he lies stone dead. Who slew this man? Who killed him? His blood be on his own head; he is as base a suicide as the other.

Now I will show you two more suicides. There is a man here who says—”Well, let what will happen in the next world, I will have my fill in this. Tell me where there are pleasures to be had and I will have them. Leave the things of God to old fools, and such like; I shall have the things of the present, and the joys and delights of time.” He drains the cup of drunkenness, frequents the haunt of folly, and if he knows where there is any vice pursued he rushes after it. Like Byron; he is a very thunderbold, launched from the hand of an arch-fiend; he flashes through the whole firmament of sin, and blazes himself out, until decayed in body and soul, he dies. He is a suicide. He defied God; he went against the laws of nature and of grace, despised warnings, declared he would be damned, and he has got what he richly deserved.

Here is another. He says, “I despise these vices; I am the most upright, honest, and commendable of men. I feel that I do not need salvation, and if I did need it I could get it myself. I can do anything you tell me to do, I feel I have mental force and manly dignity enough remaining in me to accomplish it. I tell you, sir, you insult me when you bid me trust in Christ.” “Well,” he says, “I consider there is such dignity in manhood, and so much virtue in me, that I need not a new heart, nor will I succumb and bend my spirit to the gospel of Christ on free-grace terms.” Very well sir, when in hell you lift up your eyes, and you will do so as surely as the most profligate and profane, your blood will be upon your own head; and you will be as truly a suicide as he who wantonly and wickedly dashed himself against the laws of God and man, and brought himself to a sudden and hasty end by his iniquity and crimes.

“Well,” says one, “this is a sermon well adapted to self-righteous persons, but I am not one.” Then what are you, sir? Are you a believer in Christ? “I cannot say I am, sir.” Why are you not, then? “Well, I would be, but I am afraid I may not believe in Christ.” You are self-righteous, sir. God commands you to believe in Christ, and you say you are not fit. Now what does this mean but that you are wanting to make yourself fit, and this after all is the spirit of self-righteousness; you are so proud that you will not take Christ unless you think you can bring something to him—that is it “Ah! no,” says one poor broken-hearted soul, “I do not think that is fair with me, for I do feel as if I would give anything, if I might hope to be saved; but oh, I am such a wretch! I am such a wretch! I cannot believe.” Now, that after all is self-righteousness. Christ bids you trust him. You say, “No, I will not trust thee, Christ, because I am such-an-one and such-an-one.” So, then, you are wanting to make yourself somebody, and then Jesus Christ is to do the rest. It is the same spirit of self-righteousness only in another garb. “Ah!” saith one, “but if I did but feel my need enough, as you just now said, sir, then I think I would trust Christ.” Self-righteousness again, you want your sense of need to save you. “Oh! but, sir, I cannot believe in Christ as I would.” Self-righteousness again. Let me just utter a solemn sentence which you may masticate at your leisure. If you trust to your faith and to your repentance, you will be as much lost as if you trusted to your good works or trusted to your sins. The ground of your salvation is not faith, but Christ; it is not repentance, but Christ. If I trust my trust of Christ, I am lost. My business is to trust Christ; to rest on him; to depend, not on what the Spirit has done in me, but what Christ did for me, when he did hang upon the tree. Now be it known unto you, that when Christ died, he took the sins of all his people upon his head, and there and then they all ceased to be. At the moment when Christ died, the sins of all his redeemed were blotted out. He did then suffer all they ought to have suffered; he paid all their debts; and their sins were actually and positively lifted that day from their shoulders to his shoulders, for “the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” And now, if you believe in Jesus, there is not a sin remaining upon you, for your sin was laid on Christ; Christ was punished for your sins before they were committed, and as Kent says:

“Here’s pardon for transgressions past,
It matters not how black their caste;
And oh! my soul with wonder view,
For sins to come here’s pardon too.”

Blessed privilege of the believer! But if you live and die unbelievers, know this, that all your sins lie on your own shoulders. Christ did never make any atonement for you; you were never bought with blood; you never had an interest in his sacrifice. You live and die in yourselves, lost; in yourselves, ruined; in yourselves, utterly destroyed. But believing—the moment you believe, you may know that you were chosen of God from before the foundation of the world. Believing, you may know that the righteousness of Christ is all yours; that all he did, he did for you; that all he suffered, he suffered for you. You do in fact, in the moment you believe, stand where Christ stood as God’s accepted Son; and Christ stands where you stood as the sinner, and suffers as if he had been the sinner, and dies as if he had been guilty—dies in your room, place, and stead.

Oh! Spirit of God, give faith this morning. Win us all from self; knit us all to Christ; may we be saved now by his free grace, and be saved in eternity.

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Hell Is War : Discussion Questions [Russell Moore]

Hell Is War from Russell Moore on Vimeo.

Speaker: Russell Moore
Sermon Topic: “Hell Is War: The Awful Violence of Wanting”
Texts: Exodus 20:17; James 4:1-3

This sermon was originally preached on Sunday, May 17, 2009 at Highview Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky. You can find more sermons and other resources from Dr. Moore at russellmoore.com.
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Why do you think that we want things that we don’t need?

What is the end result of covetousness? In yourself? In your relationships?

What is wrong with wishing to have the things that other people have?

Why are we not more grateful for the things we have been given?

What is the relationship between covetousness and contentment?

Have you ever heard the following quote? “One man has never married, and that’s his hell; another is, and that’s his plague.” (Robert Burton, in The Anatomy of Melancholy) Do you think it is pertinent to the sermon you have just heard?

Does this mean that we should not pray for a job? A spouse? Friends? Possessions?

Why is making a request of God not in conflict with His instruction for us not to covet?

What does this passage of Scripture mean when it says that “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly,”?

Is there something that you currently want? Have you taken it to God in prayer? Will you?

What are the possible ways in which God might answer your prayer?

Are you currently living in a state of contentment? If not, will you repent?

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Exodus 20:17 – “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.” [ESV]

James 4:1-3 – “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.” [ESV]

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“Burning Love”

Lord Almighty,
I feel my temperature rising
Higher higher
It’s burning through to my soul

Girl, girl, girl
You gonna set me on fire
My brain is flaming
I don’t know which way to go

Your kisses lift me higher
Like the sweet song of a choir
You light my morning sky
With burning love

Ooh, ooh, ooh,
I feel my temperature rising
Help me, I’m flaming
I must be a hundred and nine
Burning, burning, burning
And nothing can cool me
I just might turn into smoke
But I feel fine

Cause your kisses lift me higher
Like a sweet song of a choir
And you light my morning sky
With burning love

It’s coming closer
The flames are reaching my body
Please won’t you help me
I feel like I’m slipping away
It’s hard to breath
And my chest is a-heaving

Lord Almighty,
I’m burning a hole where I lay
Cause your kisses lift me higher
Like the sweet song of a choir
You light my morning sky
With burning love
With burning love
Ah, ah, burning love
I’m just a hunk, a hunk of burning love
Just a hunk, a hunk of burning love
Just a hunk, a hunk of burning love
Just a hunk, a hunk of burning love
Just a hunk, a hunk of burning love
Just a hunk, a hunk of burning love

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“Ring of Fire”

Love is a burning thing
And it makes a fiery ring
Bound by wild desire
I fell into a ring of fire

I fell into a burning ring of fire
I went down, down, down and the flames went higher
And it burns, burns, burns, the ring of fire
The ring of fire

The taste of love is sweet
When hearts like ours meet
I fell for you like a child
Oh, but the fire went wild

I fell into a burning ring of fire
I went down, down, down and the flames went higher
And it burns, burns, burns, the ring of fire
The ring of fire

And it burns, burns, burns, the ring of fire
The ring of fire
The ring of fire
The ring of fire

July 29, 2013 by kevinstilley

The Danger of Self Reliance – Alistair Begg

Sermon Topic: The Danger of Self Reliance
Speaker: Alistair Begg
Text: Mark 14

Why did the Hebrew people celebrate the Passover feast?

What did Jesus mean when he said ““This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many”? What connection was he making between himself and the feast that was being celebrated?

What are we to make of the fact that God “did not spare his own son”? (Romans 8:32) Was Jesus a victim? (John 10:18)

Is it possible to read and hear the word of God and not be effected by it?

Do you believe it is possible that you could fall away from Christ? The disciples abandoned Jesus during his time of crisis, are you better than them? How did Peter respond when Jesus told him that Peter would fall way? What is the danger of pride and presumption in regard to our commitment to Christ? (Mark 14:27, 31, 50)

Alistair Begg points out six lessons to take away from this historical event; can you name any of them?

Lesson 1
Proverbs 18:18 “Pride goes before destruction,a haughty spirit before a fall.” Proverbs 28:26 “Those who trust in themselves are fools, but those who walk in wisdom are kept safe.”

Lesson 2
Our hearts are far more wicked than we ever know. (Jeremiah 17:9)

Lesson 3
We need to learn to take Christ at his word and submit ourselves to what he has said.

Lesson 4
Be alert to the way we may influence others.

Lesson 5
There is a reminder in this for us to be gracious in our dealings with each other.

Lesson 6
We learn, as this story unfolds, that failure with God is never final.

Do you need to take heed to one of these lessons? Where do you fit into this story? Where are you at in your daily walk with Christ?

How can you rest in the security of the preservation of God? What role does repentance and faith play in the security that is found in Christ?

June 9, 2013 by kevinstilley

The Importance of Holiness : Discussion Questions

Topic: The Importance of Holiness
Speaker: R.C. Sproul
Scripture: Isaiah 6:1-

What?

What interest do you think the modern Christian has in the topic of the holiness of God? Is this topic discussed much in the church that you attend? How important do you think it is?
What did Isaiah see?
What is the significance of the statement that “the train of his wardrobe filled the temple?”
This is the only place in Scripture that mentions the Seraphim. What are they? What do they do with their wings?
What was the message of the angels/Seraphim?
What is the significance of the repetition in the song of the angels?

So What?

What relevance does the holiness of God have to the life we live? Do you think that a sermon on the holiness of God is as relevant to today’s Christian as a sermon on marriage, finances, sex, or personal peace and happiness?

Now What?

Does your life reflect a proper understanding of God’s holiness?
Can a person live in a right relationship (righteousness) to God’s holiness? (Romans 3:9-20) How does God make it possible for someone to be in a right relationship (righteousness) to his holiness? (Romans 3:21-26)

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Isaiah 6

6:1 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne, and His robe filled the temple. ²Seraphim were standing above Him; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. ³And one called to another:

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts;
His glory fills the whole earth.

⁴The foundations of the doorways shook at the sound of their voices, and the temple was filled with smoke.

⁵Then I said:

Woe is me for I am ruined
because I am a man of unclean lips
and live among a people of unclean lips,
and because my eyes have seen the King,
the Lord of Hosts.

⁶Then one of the seraphim flew to me, and in his hand was a glowing coal that he had taken from the altar with tongs. ⁷He touched my mouth with it and said:

Now that this has touched your lips,
your wickedness is removed
and your sin is atoned for.

⁸Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying:

Who should I send?
Who will go for Us?

I said:

Here I am. Send me.

⁹And He replied:

Go! Say to these people:
Keep listening, but do not understand;
keep looking, but do not perceive.
¹⁰Dull the minds of these people;
deafen their ears and blind their eyes;
otherwise they might see with their eyes
and hear with their ears,
understand with their minds,
turn back, and be healed.

¹¹Then I said, “Until when, Lord?” And He replied:

Until cities lie in ruins without inhabitants,
houses are without people,
the land is ruined and desolate,
¹²and the Lord drives the people far away,
leaving great emptiness in the land.
¹³Though a tenth will remain in the land,
it will be burned again.
Like the terebinth or the oak
that leaves a stump when felled,
the holy seed is the stump. (Holman Christian Standard Bible)

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Holy, Holy, Holy
Lyrics by Reginald Hebnr
Music by John Bacchus Dykes

Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty!
Early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee;
Holy, Holy, Holy! Merciful and Mighty!
God in Three Persons, blessed Trinity!

Holy, Holy, Holy! all the saints adore Thee,
Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea;
Cherubim and Seraphim falling down before Thee,
Which wert, and art, and evermore shalt be.

Holy, Holy, Holy! though the darkness hide Thee,
Though the eye of sinful man Thy glory may not see:
Only Thou art holy, there is none beside Thee,
Perfect in power, in love, and purity.

Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty!
All Thy works shall praise thy name in earth and sky and sea;
Holy, Holy, Holy! Merciful and Mighty!
God in Three Persons, blessed Trinity!

* * *

This is the first lecture in the Ligonier teaching series The Holiness of God.

The Ligonier website describes the series as follow,

“The Holiness of God examines the meaning of holiness and why people are both fascinated and terrified by a holy God. This series closely explores God’s character, leading to new insights on sin, justice, and grace. The result is a new awareness of our dependence upon God’s mercy and a discovery of the awesomeness of His majestic holiness. Dr. R.C. Sproul says, “The holiness of God affects every aspect of our lives — economics, politics, athletics, romance — everything with which we are involved.”

Discussion questions and video for the rest of the series can be found at the following links:

__________

Get “The Holiness of God” DVD Collection

Check out the Ligonier website for additional resources.

__________

Holiness – Select Quotes

__________

| | | |

June 2, 2013 by kevinstilley

Anger Bible Verses

“Be angry and do not sin. Don’t let the sun go down on your anger, and don’t give the Devil an opportunity. The thief must no longer steal. Instead, he must do honest work with his own hands, so that he has something to share with anyone in need. No rotten talk should come from your mouth, but only what is good for the building up of someone in need, in order to give grace to those who hear. And don’t grieve God’s Holy Spirit, who sealed you for the day of redemption. All bitterness, anger and wrath, insult and slander must be removed from you, along with all wickedness. And be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another, just as God also forgave you in Christ.” Ephesians 4:26-31

“My dearly loved brothers, understand this: everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger, for man’s anger does not accomplish God’s righteousness.” James 1:19-20

“Refrain from anger and give up [your] rage; do not be agitated-it can only bring harm.” Psalm 37:8

“Then the Lord said to Cain, ‘Why are you furious? And why are you downcast? 7 If you do right, won’t you be accepted? But if you do not do right, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must master it.’” Genesis 4:6-7

“A gentle answer turns away anger, but a harsh word stirs up wrath.” Proverbs 15:1

“A hot-tempered man stirs up conflict, but a man slow to anger calms strife. “ Proverbs 15:18

“Patience is better than power, and controlling one’s temper, than capturing a city. “ Proverbs 16:32

“A person’s insight gives him patience, and his virtue is to overlook an offense.” Proverbs 19:11

“A patient person [shows] great understanding, but a quick-tempered one promotes foolishness. “ Proverbs 14:29

“A quick-tempered man acts foolishly, and a man who schemes is hated.” Proverbs 14:17

“A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man holds it in check.” Proverbs 29:11

“An angry man stirs up conflict, and a hot-tempered man increases rebellion.” Proverbs 29:22

“Don’t let your spirit rush to be angry, for anger abides in the heart of fools.” Ecclesiastes 7:9

“But now you must also put away all the following: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and filthy language from your mouth.” Colossians 3:8

“What is the source of the wars and the fights among you? Don’t they come from the cravings that are at war within you? You desire and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. You do not have because you do not ask.“ James 4:1-12

“Don’t make friends with an angry man, and don’t be a companion of a hot-tempered man, or you will learn his ways and entangle yourself in a snare. “ Proverbs 22:24-25

“But I tell you, everyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. And whoever says to his brother, ‘Fool!’ will be subject to the Sanhedrin. But whoever says, ‘You moron!’ will be subject to hellfire.” Matthew 5:22

“God is a just judge, And God is angry with the wicked every day” Psalm 7:11 (NKJV)

_ _ _

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holman Christian Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Holman Christian Standard Bible®, Holman CSB®, and HCSB® are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers.

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June 2, 2013 by kevinstilley

Lamech’s Song of the Sword: Discussion Questions

Lamech’s Song of the Sword (Gen 4:23-24) from Russell Moore on Vimeo.

Sermon Title: Lamech’s Song of the Sword
Biblical Text: Genesis 4:17-24
Speaker: Dr. Russell Moore
Date: October 3, 2010
Location: Highview Baptist Church, Louisville, Kentucky

What

Why does Cain name the city that he founded after the name of his son Enoch?
Dr. Moore speaks of Cain’s actions as being “in the flesh.” What does it mean to act “in the flesh”?
How do we see the beginnings of civilization in Genesis 4?
Why do you think the stories of human beings in music, movies, novels and other forms of expression are dominated by themes that the speaker describes as “dark”? How does the song of Lamech in Genesis 4:24-25 compare?

So What

Cain tries to hide his sin, but Lamech boasts about it. Do you think that sin progresses generationally? What can we do about that?
What might be the result of anger, arrogance, and envy that goes unchecked in the home?
What is the significance of the birth of Seth?

Now What

Will you turn your back upon a lifestyle of sin, repent, and trust in Christ to transform you?
What change might take place in your life as you place your trust completely in the Lord Jesus Christ?

November 7, 2012 by kevinstilley

Priesthood of the Believer

Bill Hull came up with five basic principles of church polity and practice based upon a composite understanding of the five biblical passages that address the priesthood of the believer; 1 Peter 2:5; 1 Peter 2:9, Rev. 1:5-6, Rev. 5:9-10, and Rev. 20:6. I am not saying that Hull’s five principles are wrong, but I am not sure that all of them are necessary inferences from the these particular texts. Take a look at his list, and the Scripture passages that follow them. Do you think the list of principles he shares are natural conclusions from the five biblical passages? If not, do you think they are accurate? If accurate, where would you go in Scripture to argue for their truthfulness?

1. The priesthood of the believer must be held in healthy tension with other basic concepts; it is not absolute.

2. The believer can delegate some of the authority of his life and ministry to other believers.

3. The priesthood of the believer is conditioned by the gifts and roles in the life of the fellowship.

4. The priesthood of the believer implies shared responsibility and ministry as well as shared authority.

5. The priesthood of the believer is the basis for decision-making in the church.

1 Peter 2:5 – you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

1 Peter 2:9 – But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

Revelation 1:5-6 – and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood 6 and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

Revelation 5:9-10 – And they sang a new song, saying,

“Worthy are you to take the scroll
and to open its seals,
for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God
from every tribe and language and people and nation,
and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God,
and they shall reign on the earth.”

Revelation 20:6 – Blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first resurrection! Over such the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him for a thousand years.

May 28, 2012 by kevinstilley

Do Christians Have A Sin Nature?

The greatest truth we can ever be told is that our old self has gone. I can deal with the body of sin only as I realize that my old self has gone, and I have a new self. This is the most striking and amazing truth.
~ D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

If you are a Christian, it’s a serious misunderstanding to think of yourself as having both an old and new nature. We do not have a dual personality! Assuming the dual nature of the believer could easily lead one to excuse all kinds of sins by blaming them on the old nature. The popular theological concept of the old man and the new man fighting each other is not biblically accurate.
~ John MacArthur

We live as though our ‘old man’ is still alive, even though we are dead to him. He has no right to be in our conscious thinking. We serve a new Master who has walked us across the threshold, who has awakened us to new life, new love, to a new relationship and to an entirely different future.
~ Chuck Swindoll

November 6, 2011 by kevinstilley

Self-Esteem – select quotes

Our self-esteem is more inclined to resent criticism of our tastes than of our opinions.
~ Francois, duc de La Rochefoucauld

Oft times, nothing profits more than self-esteem, grounded on just and right.
~John Milton, in Paradise Lost

To be specific, the self-sins are these: self-righteousness, self-pity, self-confidence, self-sufficiency, self-admiration, self-love and a host of others like them. They dwell too deep within us and are too much a part of our natures to come to our attention till the light of God is focused upon them. The grosser manifestations of these sins, egotism, exhibitionism, self-promotion, are strangely tolerated in Christian leaders even in circles of impeccable orthodoxy. They are so much in evidence as actually, form any people, to become identified with the gospel. I trust it is not a cynical observation to say that they appear these days to be a requisite for popularity in some sections of the Church visible. Promoting self under the guise of promoting Christ is currently so common as to excite little notice.
~ A.W. Tozer, in The Pursuit of God, Chapter 3 – Removing the Veil

The Backslider in Heart : Discussion Questions

A Blow At Self-Righteousness

Hell Is War : Discussion Questions [Russell Moore]

Speaker: Russell Moore
Sermon Topic: “Hell Is War: The Awful Violence of Wanting”
Texts: Exodus 20:17; James 4:1-3

The Danger of Self Reliance – Alistair Begg

The Importance of Holiness : Discussion Questions

Anger Bible Verses

Lamech’s Song of the Sword: Discussion Questions

Priesthood of the Believer

Do Christians Have A Sin Nature?

Self-Esteem – select quotes

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Speaker: Russell Moore Sermon Topic: “Hell Is War: The Awful Violence of Wanting” Texts: Exodus 20:17; James 4:1-3

Connect With Me On Twitter

Connect With Me On Facebook

Receive My Monthly Newsletter

Speaker: Russell Moore
Sermon Topic: “Hell Is War: The Awful Violence of Wanting”
Texts: Exodus 20:17; James 4:1-3