THE EVIL OF THE RESTRAINING AMONG NEAR RELATIVES OF FREE INTERCOURSE ABOUT THEIR SOULS, IS EVIDENT from this, first of all
1. That it is a breach of God’s express command in the text, “Exhort one another daily.” If this duty lies on professing Christians simply as such, much more must it be obligatory on husband and wife, brother and sister, parent and child.
2. The evil of it appears in that it involves, I suspect to a very large extent, the sin of being ashamed of Christ and of His words. Whence that strange silence, that awe-struck air in the presence of a brother? If it were before a stranger, one might try to account for it in different ways. But this will not do among persons accustomed to open their minds freely on every other subject.
3. This restraint cuts off all the precious innumerable benefits which God intended to arise from the exhortation enjoined in the text, and which in families were all the greater, in virtue of the constant opportunities and peculiar facilities there afforded for it. What daily consolation, what instruction, what warning, what encouragement, what direction, are thus lost for ever!
4. There is a specially mischievous effect produced by it on the children of a family. The absence of it throws a fearful stumbling-block in their way. Is heaven a reality? Is Christ indeed beloved? Is the soul imperishable? The faith of the child, such as it is, is gradually sapped and undermined.
5. Near relatives are, by this restraint, deprived of one of the mightiest incentives to a holy life.
II. THE CAUSES OF THIS.
1. The unregenerate condition of too many parents, and other near relatives, professing religion. They cannot speak of Christ, because they are ignorant of Him. They cannot commend Him to others, because they have never themselves embraced Him. The world is their theme, because it is their treasure, their god.
2. Careless, inconsistent walking before God and each other, among near relatives, is one painful and powerful cause. Persons professing godliness, united in very endearing ties, are not careful to order their lives in each other’s sight, entirely as becomes the gospel. Honesty forbids it. It is felt that it were hypocrisy to talk of Christ’s love and of His law, unless, at least, it were with the avowed design of committing the parties to an immediate change. But still farther
3. And in close connection with inconsistent walking, yet distinct from it, I believe that the chief cause of the restraint in question among the people of God is to be found in the want of soul-prosperity, and of a close and habitual intercourse in secret with God and His blessed Word. The want, in short, of religion, or the low’ state of it, are the real causes of this evil.
III. There can be little difficulty in discovering and noticing THE REMEDIES, under God, for the evil. These must take their character from the causes.
1. I besought you to ask yourselves, as in God’s sight, whether ye were Christ’s indeed.
2. If the cause lie with you in careless and inconsistent walking, whatever other remedies you may employ, let that command be heard, “Put away the strange gods which are among you, and prepare your hearts unto the Lord, and serve Him only.” And especially
3. In the third place, seek the remedy for this evil in a closer walk with God, in a more habitual, living fellowship with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ. (C. J. Brown.)
Model exhortation
I would have every minister of the gospel address his audience with the zeal of a friend, with the generous energy of a father, and with the exuberant affection of a mother. (Fenelon.)
Lest any of you be hardened
Soul-fossilisation
I. THE EVIL ITSELF.
1. It is from an obstinate refusal to attend to Divine things, which are irksome and painful, and the soul is better pleased with those things which are congenial, and afford pleasure and satisfaction.
2. It is from the natural character of the heart, which, unless renewed, refuses to bend to the teachings of grace and the leadings of the Holy Spirit.
II. THE PREVALENCE OF THE EVIL. It exists everywhere that human nature exists. It is both natural and acquired. The heart, though naturally hard, is made harder by the circumstances by which it is surrounded.
III. THE END AND CONSEQUENCE OF THE EVIL. It is like the fossilisation of an object which we sometimes see. A piece of wood or cotton is placed under the drip of a waterfall; in a short time it is encrusted, and becomes, to all intents and purposes, a stone. It is hard, unimpressionable, will neither melt nor burn. So the heart of man may become a fossil, incapable of good actions, tender thoughts, holy feelings. (Homilist.)
The danger of heart-hardening through sin
I. THE SOURCE OF GREAT AND ALARMING DANGER.
1. Sin is deceitful.
(1) In its appearances.
(2) In its promises.
(3) In its influences.
2. Sin prevails through its deceitfulness. In the time of temptation its deformity is hid; its real character is veiled. Many a man on a dying bed has been compelled to feel the difference of the views he has entertained in health and in a state of sickness. But when sin presents itself to the objects of its temptation, it suggests itself as easy to be avoided: “Oh, you are not the slaves of sin; you may avoid it, or you may limit your progress in it; yield to the temptation, and stop when you please.” So the devil deceives the human mind. It often changes its tone, and it is equally deceitful in both cases. It is sometimes represented as irresistible; the man says, “I have no power to resist it.” This is the way the mind is operated upon by the tempter. Oh, how great is the deceitfulness of sin 1
3. Sin hardens through its deceitfulness.
(1) Hardness of heart implies a state of moral insensibility, the moral susceptibility of the heart being removed, the soul becoming callous, so that spiritual things do not impress.
(2) In hardness of heart there is a principle of inflexibility and rebellion in the heart. It is not merely hard like stone; there is something like a reaction: the hardness is manifested in its resistance to the claims of truth--an inward principle of rebellion against God.
(3) Sin hardens the heart by strengthening the principles and habits of iniquity in us. The restraints of conscience in this way are overcome.
II. THE CONDUCT THAT IS TO BE PURSUED UNDER THESE CIRCUMSTANCES, We must “exhort one another.”
1. Now exhortation implies instruction. We are to endeavour to diffuse “the savour of the knowledge of Christ Jesus the Lord.”
2. This exhortation implies warning and reproof; where it is necessary to warn our fellow-creatures that are in danger of “being hardened through the deceitfulness of sin”; to set the danger before them, and affectionately to point out to them the dreadful consequences which must ensue.
3. But this implies also encouragement. We ought to encourage one another to look to God, to seek much grace to enable us to counteract the influence of sin.
4. But this exhortation to which we are admonished is private exhortation. Now let me remind you that the discharge of this duty does necessarily imply a disposition to receive exhortation as well as to give it.
5. But this is a serious and a very difficult duty to discharge successfully.
(1) If you exhort one another let it be seriously, then; do not affect to give religious instruction in a spirit of levity. Let us remember that the soul is the object concerned.
(2) And let it be with a right spirit; do not assume superiority; do not pretend to dictate like masters.
(3) In love.
(4) Seasonably. Watch for opportunities.
(5) Prayerfully. All our effort will be unavailing without God’s blessing.
(6) Frequently. “Daily,” i.e, as often as you can seasonably..
(7) Urgently. Whatever we do we must do now, or perhaps we shall not do it at all: we know not what another hour may bring forth. (Josiah Hill.)
Private exhortation
1. Private Christians not only may, but should, keep Christian communion amongst themselves, and mutually exhort and stir up one another.
2. This is a necessary means of preserving people from defection.
3. And a duty daily to be discharged while it is to-day; that is, as oft, and as long, as God giveth present occasion and opportunity for it, lest a scattering come. (D. Dickson, M. A.)
A warning against hardness of heart
I. THE HARDENING CHARACTER OF SIN.
1. There is no doubt whatever that living among sinners has a hardening tendency upon men. You cannot walk about in this great lazar-house without receiving some contagion.
2. Let me here remark that the sins of God’s people are peculiarly operative in this manner. If I see a drunkard intoxicated, I am simply shocked at him, but I am not likely to imitate his example; but if I see the same vice in a man whom I respect, and whose example has hitherto been to me the guide of my life, I may be greatly grieved at first, but the tendency of my mind will be to make an excuse for him; and when one has succeeded in framing a plausible excuse for the sin of another, it is very natural to use it on one’s own behalf. Association with inconsistent Christians has been the downfall of many young believers. The devil delights to use God’s own birds as a decoy for his nets.
3. It is often a long and laborious process by which conscience is completely seared. It usually begins thus: the man’s first carefulness and tenderness departs. It may not seem a great evil to have less abhorrence of evil, but this truly is the egg from which the worst mischief may come. The next distressing sign of growing hardness is increasing neglect or laxity of private devotions without any corresponding shock of the spiritual sensibilities on account of it. Another symptom of increasing callousness of heart is the fact that hidings of the Saviour’s face do not cause that acute and poignant sorrow which they produced in former times. Still further, when the soul is hardened to this extent, it is probable that sin will no longer cause such grief as it once did. It is a sad sign of coming declension when we can talk of sin lightly, make excuses for it, or make jokes about it. The next step in this ladder, down, down, down to destruction, is that sin thus causing less grief is indulged in more freely. After this there is still a greater hardening of heart--the man comes to dislike rebukes.
II. THE PECULIAR POWER WHICH LIES IN SIN TO HARDEN THE HEART. It is the deceitfulness of sin. The heart is deceitful, and sin is deceitful; and when these two deceitful ones lay their heads together to make up a case, there is no wonder if man, like a silly dove, is taken in their net. One of the first ways in which sin deceives the professor is by saying, “You see no hurt has come of it.” Forgetting that the immediate results of sin are not always apparent in this world, and that if hardness of heart be not apparent it is all the more real. Then sin will whisper next, “This would be sin in other people, but it is not in you. You see you were placed in a peculiar position; there is indulgence for you which could not be accorded to other men: you are young,” says sin, “nobody could accuse you if you did go a little rashly to work--if you were an older professor it would be very wrong.” Then if it is an old man who is to be deceived, sin will cry, “You must take care of yourself; you need more indulgence than others.” If a man be in private life, sin will then suggest, “It does not matter in you: it would be wrong in a church-officer, but nobody knows it in your case.” If it be some person in high repute, then sin whispers, “Your character is so well established it will bear it.” Again, sin will sometimes have the impudence to say, “It is very easy to repent of it.” This vile traitor is even dastardly enough to take the doctrines of grace and turn them into a reason for sin.
III. THE REMEDY WHICH IS PROVIDED IN THE TEXT FOR US TO USE WITH OTHERS. “Exhort one another.” Doubtless many professors would be saved from gross sins if mutual exhortation were more commonly practised in the churches of God in the power of the Holy Spirit. All of you, without exception, whether you be rich or poor, see to each other’s souls; say not, “Am I my brother’s keeper? “ It is so pleasant to restore a brother from the error of his ways, that I can offer you no greater reward than these two, to screen the name of Christ from shame, and to have the pleasure of saving a soul from death and covering a multitude of sins
IV. SUPPOSE THIS TO BE THE CASE WITH ANY ONE OF US, WHAT THEN? Some of us arc in such a position that we are not very likely to be exhorted, we are keepers of the vineyard, and have none who would take upon themselves to admonish us. Our enemies, however, very ably supply the lack, for they often tell us very profitable, but very unpleasant truths. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Hardness of heart
Hardness scarcely needs an explanation. It is that which, taking it from the armoury or from the smithery, gives the power to any metal to resist a weapon thrown against it; to turn the edge of the sword, to blunt the point of the spear, to quench the fiery dart, as it were: and in that sense of course it would be auspicious to have something that was hardened. But to render insensitive that which is carried within, and which ought to be sensitive; to have a disposition which has the power of turning away an appeal, of dismissing an argument, and of making vital truth a matter of indifference--that kind of hardening is much to be deplored. And it is just that which we are cautioned against. Every physician knows that a medicine is worn out by continuous use. As it were, the system adapts itself to it, and it ceases to be remedial. So there is a power in repetitious truth to become unremedial to men. This hardening is not brought about on purpose in those to whom I refer. I am not speaking to that class of persons who deliberately set themselves against the truth; I am speaking to that very much larger class of persons who first become indifferent to truth, and then are deceived in regard to it, and at last are snared by its enemies. One of the circumstances which tend to deceive men, and to wear out the power of truth upon their conscience and upon their understanding, is the attempt to make truth merely the cause of susceptibility, or of mere emotions. Men want to be stirred up; they want to feel; but feeling constantly stirred up and never employed loses tone. It is had for any man to have feeling that abides as feeling. Now it is the peculiar nature of religious truth that it plays upon excitability. Of truth there is much that touches hope, much that touches fear, and much that touches conscience, on every side; but it is a very dangerous thing for a man to hear more truth preached than he cares to practise. You may say that so much of that which he hears as he does not practise goes over to the account of instruction; and that may be so in regard to truth set forth in a didactic form; but to accustom oneself to hearing truth merely for the sake of having it play upon the susceptibilities is very dangerous, because it is a very deceitful experience; and yet there are multitudes of persons that do it. Then, next, there are a great many who hear the teaching of the Word of God, who receive it into good ground--that is, into their reason--who approve it, who feel as though they ought to give heed to it, andwho wish to profit by it, but in whom the impulse dies with that wish, and does not convert itself into a choice. They say, “I think that view was just: it commends itself to my mind as truth, and I really have been taking it home to myself; I am thinking about it; the time has come when I should be a better man, and take some steps in advance; if I am ever going to be a Christian man I ought to become one now”--and that is about the extent to which they go. Now, when a man has done that through the first year, when he has done it through the second year, and when he has done it through the third year, he begins to be tattooed, as it were. Constant iteration and trituration harden the skin, and the sensibility of his mind becomes like the sensibility of the palm of his hand, and grows leather-like. By reason of the continual handling of a man’s judgment his power of choosing becomes inert and inoperative. The perpetual raining of truth upon a man may be kept up without developing in him either character, as I said in the first instance, or choice, as I say in the second instance. Then, when the truth is being preached to men of their own sinfulness, and of their great need of a transformed nature, so that they shall rise from the flesh life to the spirit life, a great many persons feel as though this were a thing that ought to be pondered. They feel as though time should be taken to think of it. They are afraid they shall commit themselves without having reckoned whether, beginning a Christian life, they can complete it. So they take it into account. And there are two points to be made on that subject. In the first place, there is one class who take it into account, not by meditation and thought, but by reverie. It is one thing for a man to say, “God be merciful to me, a sinner; without the interposition of Divine grace I am lost; and I will cry immediately to God for help; I will begin a Christian life to-day.” That is effectual. But, on the other hand, a man, coming home from listening to a strong sermon, says, “That was well put. What if I should go to church next Sunday night, and the minister should preach on Lazarus? And what if I should be awakened? And what if I should have one of those terrible experiences which I have heard of? And what if all the sins of my life should be brought before me? And what if I should roll all night in distress? Then the minister would come and see me, and friends would gather around me, and I would pray and wrestle, and by-and-by there would suddenly come a bur,-t of light, and I should be converted, and everything would be new to me; and I would join the Church, and what a happy day it would be for father and mother when they saw me do that! And I would be a real Christian--not a lean, skinny Christian, like some that I have seen.” Thus a man weaves the fabric of an imaginary life, and it is all reverie. He supposes he is thinking about religion. He says, “I am taking it into consideration.” Oh, fool! you are taking it into consideration very much as a spider weaves silk when he makes cobwebs to catch flies on. It is all in the air. It is vacuous. There are other persons who have a very salutary horror of insincerity. They say to themselves, “This matter of religion is of transcendent importance, and if a man is going to be a Christian he ought to consider it well.” And there is a certain sort of comeliness in this. No man ought to go tumbling headlong into a profession of religion. But it is not necessary that a man should have a theological education before he can become a Christian. And, besides, no man can wait. No man does wait. There is not a man of you who, when the way of manhood is pointed out to him, does not choose. You go one way or the other. You know what truth is, and you either take the way of truth or the way of falsehood. Ten thousand influences upon every side have been pressing home the truth upon you. And what is the result? You say, “Yes, religion is a profoundly important thing; and yet it is one that ought to be much thought of.” But this ought not so to be. It is not for you, like a ship in a harbour, to cast anchor now, and swing with every tide that carries you first north and then south, for ever changing and never travelling. It is not for you to stand still and talk about thinking. A long time ago you ought to have been doing. You ought before now to have chosen, and to have converted sensibility into conduct and character. And if all the excuse you have for not entering upon a Christian life is that you do not want to do it until you have laid the foundations of thought; if you excuse yourself by saying, “I do not want to go into a Christian life until I have made sure that I will not come out of it,” then let me warn you lest you harden your heart through the deceitfulness of sin in this most guileful and specious form. At last, when men have got past these stages, there comes the stage of easy acquiescence and of mild criticism from the standpoint of mere taste. They make such a voyage as boys make who take their whittled-out miniature boats over to the park and sail them across the lake and back again. There is as much in one of these voyages as in the other. There are others who criticise the truth from a logical and instructive standpoint. They have intellectual acumen, they have critical sensibility, they are good critics: a great deal better critics than they are Christians. The truth may be as weighty as eternity; it may be a truth that reaches to the very heart of Christ; it may be the whole theme of salvation by faith in the Saviour: and all that it does to them is to excite in them a momentary pleasure of the taste, a transient gratification of the intellect, and a generous criticism as to its ability or inability, as the case may be. And what is the condition of a man upon whom the presentation of the weightiest truths no longer awakens sensibility, nor stimulates a disposition to choose, nor creates an impulse in the right direction? These are not bad men--that is, in the sense of being vicious, or in the sense of being guilty of outrageousness in any way. Often their conduct is conformable to all the best rules of social life. But they have sealed themselves against the higher forms of spiritual growth which translate one from the life of the body to the life of the Spirit. And their chances for development in true manhood as it is in Christ Jesus grow less and less every day through the deceitfulness of sin which is hardening their hearts. And so as men grow old, as age creeps on them, upon natural decay is superinduced this waste which arises from the constant hearing of the truth and from non-action, and which results in men’s coming into that dry and arid state in which the harvest is past, and the summer is ended, and they are not saved. And now, what is to be done? Consider the guilt of every man who thus practises upon himself. It was only as early as 1400, I think, in the war between the Turks and the Greeks, that that magnificent structure, the Acropolis, and the temple of Minerva, and the statue of Minerva, and that wonderful frieze, the work of Phidias, whose very fragment has been the despair of the art of modern days, were destroyed. Into the magnificent temple of Minerva, which was the glory of Athens, the Turks threw bombs, which exploded and shattered the temple into a mass of shapeless ruins; and that which adorned the ripest age of the world in beauty and art perished, as it were, in an hour. To have demolished an old granite fort, to have battered down an old earthwork, would have caused sorrow to no one; but to have blotted out the grandest and most exquisite achievements of human taste, human thought, and human hand-skill, must have filled with regret every heart that loved what was beautiful. But what is any statue, even from the chisel of Phidias, or what is any temple, compared with man, who is the temple of God? and what was ever wrought in ivory or marble that was to be compared with the humanity that is in every man? and for you to destroy that humanity in yourself, to turn it into courses of evil, in spite of the influences that are tending to draw it the other way; and so to trample under foot and extinguish your higher nature--that is wanton. It is wicked beyond the power of language to express its degree of wickedness. Woe be to the man who corrupts his spiritual nature, or overlays it with animalism, or beats it down in spite of its crying, and destroys it. Consider, too, what is the nature of the truth that men resist. If the gospel of Christ had simply disclosed to men the infamy of their condition, if it had merely poured out upon them warnings and threatenings, if it had withheld from them all promises of mercy, then there would have been little to attract them to it, and there would have been some reason for their revulsion from it; but the whole presentation of the truth as it is in Christ is charming to the reason, to every noble sensibility, to every feeling of honour, and to every elevated taste, however exacting. The whole tone and the whole sphere of the New Testament is as sweet as music, and ought to vibrate upon every uperverted heart, and ought to make every soul desire to have that commerce with God and with the Lord Jesus Christ by which it shall rise and take hold upon its immortal destiny. And now, suffer me not to preach to you; suffer me to beseech you. If there are any here who have serious thoughts, let me say to them, Serious thoughts are very well if you make something out of them. In summer, when drought has long prevailed, clouds come trooping through the sky, and the farmer says, “Ah! at last the weary, parched earth will be refreshed”; but no, the clouds have no rain in them, they pass on, and the ground is as dry as it was before. To-morrow other clouds sail in caravans through the heavens, and give promise of refreshing showers; but the showers do not come. Thoughts that produce no results are of little account. To be worth anything they must be condensed into forms of active life. And while I urge you to heed and ponder the Word of God, I bid you to beware of taking it so that it shall not lead to the production of fruit in your Christian life. (H. W. Beecher.)
Hardened by being melted
When the cloud is dried up off the mountain’s brow, and the dew off the rock, the mountain is as great as before, and the rock as hard; but when convictions fade away from the heart of a natural man, they leave the mountain of his sins much greater, and his rocky heart much harder. It is less likely that that man will ever be saved. Just as iron is hardened by being melted and cooled again; just as a person recovering from fever relapses, and is worse than before. (R. M.McCheyne.)
Character tends to fixity
The Bible says nothing about how an old man can cleanse his way. When a man reaches the age of forty or fifty he cannot change the shape of his collar, how much less that of his character! (Prof. H. Drummond.)
Past feeling
It is not necessary for a man to die out of the world in order that his spiritual salvation may be closed. There are many who are doomed before they die. They reject the offers of salvation until they become hardened and encased as it were in steel, beaten hard like steel, and at last they become so hardened that they resist all impression, they will not listen, and their insensibility grows upon them. It is a fact which cannot be denied, that the more we resist the offers of mercy the more insensible we become to them; all spiritual sensibility in the case of some people seems to have died out before they quit this world, and it is against this that I warn you. (J. Stoughton, D. D.)
Spiritual insensibility
A minister of the gospel on one occasion made a solemn appeal to the young to seek God without delay, urging as a motive that, should they live to be old, difficulties would multiply, and their reluctance to attend to the subject would increase with their years. As the preacher descended from the pulpit at the close of the service, an aged man came forward, and extending his hand to him, with much emotion remarked, “Sir, what you said just now is unquestionably true. I know it from my own experience. When I was young I said to myself, I cannot give up the world now, but I will by-and-by when I have passed the meridian of life and begin to sink into the vale of years; then I will become a Christian; then I shall be ready to attend to the concerns of my soul. But here I am, an old man, and not yet a Christian. I feel no readiness nor disposition to enter upon the work of my salvation. In looking back, I often feel as though I would give worlds if I could be placed where I was when I was twenty years old, for there were not half as many difficulties in my path then as there are now.” Though tears coursed down his cheeks as he gave utterance to these truths, the emotions that were stirred up within him, like the early dew, soon passed away: he did not turn to God.
Heart-hardening
On a winter evening, when the frost is setting in with growing intensity, and when the sun is now far past the meridian, and gradually sinking in the western sky, there is a double reason why the ground grows every moment harder and more impenetrable to the plough. On the one hand, the frost of evening, with ever-increasing intensity, is indurating the stiffening clods. On the other hand, the genial rays, which alone can soften them, are every moment withdrawing and losing their enlivening power. Take heed that it be not so with you. As long as you are unconverted, you are under a double process of hardening. The frosts of an eternal night are settling down upon your souls; and the Sun of Righteousness with westering wheel, is hastening to set upon you for evermore. If, then, the plough of grace cannot force its way into your ice-bound heart to-day, what likelihood is there that it will enter to-morrow? (R. M.McCheyne.)
A hardened heart
An old man, one day taking a child on his knee, entreated him to seek God now--to pray to Him--and to love Him; when the child, looking up at him, asked, “But why do you not seek God?” The old man, deeply affected, answered, “I would, child: but my heart is hard--my heart is hard.”
The deceitfulness of sin
The deceitfulness of sin
Our vital energy finds issue in three great regions: those of thought, of word, of deed. In each one of these there is duty, and there is fault. In each of them there is the voice of God speaking in our consciences, there is the written law of God guiding, confirming, furthering, that inward voice; in each of them there is in us the constant disposition to set conscience and to set God aside, and to become our own guides, our own masters. Let us then take each one of there in turn, and show in each how manifold sin is, how deceitful.
I. Sons of THOUGHT. Nothing is so deceitful as the taking account of our own thoughts and feelings. Memory cannot copy faithfully the picture which has faded away, but overlays and tricks it out with fresh and unreal colours. Still, there is no question that our real thoughts can be got at, and their liability to sin justly measured, if we will spend time and trouble over it. We may venture to say that the great burden of our sins of thought will be found to consist in a want of honest, conscientious adoption and following of what we know to be real and true. When selfish views spread before us in all their attractiveness, the fertile plains of Sodom tempting us to dwell in them, does the course of self-denial to which we are pledged instantly assert its claim? When the temper is roused by insult, when the pride is stung by contumely, when the self-opinion is buffeted by designed slight, and the tyrant fiend of revenge springs to his feet in a moment,--do our eyes see, or do they refuse to see, the Spirit of the Lord lifting His standard against him?
II. Sins of WORD. And here I shall not speak of bad and unholy and impure words, of evil speaking, lying, and slandering: these are manifest: if we fall into these, we know it, we repent of it; but I shall speak of sins of word more beneath the surface, into which when we fall, we do not know it, of which, when we have fallen into them, we are little accustomed to repent. And I believe such sins will mainly be found, as regards our dealings with men, in stating or not stating the very truth of our sentiments and feelings and beliefs. I am not now speaking of hypocrisy, nor of any wilful and conscious disingenuousness, hut of a general want of clear and fearless truthfulness. When will men come to feel that the blessed gospel of Christ never was and never can be the gainer by any false statement, any equivocation, any shrinking from dangerous truth or unwelcome fact? If again the effect of this timid untruthful religion be bad on a man’s self, much more is it hurtful and fatal on others.
III. Sins of ACT AND DEED: doing what we ought not to do, leaving undone what we ought to do. Oh that there were in any of us the habit of referring our questioning thoughts at once to His verdict whom we profess to serve; of guiding our actions simply, humbly, fearlessly, by His precept anmd His example! If we were earnest like Him, humble like Him, wise like Him, we should recommend and adornour unflinching course of Christian duty by quietness,by unobtrusiveness, by consideration for others, by knowledge what to say, and when, and to whom. It is not the busy protester against what other men do, it is not the man who is ever found up in arms against the usages of society, who does the good; but he who is gifted with sound judgment enough to overlook things indifferent, to join in practices which he himself would perchance not have chosen, it by so doing he may cheer, and bless, and hallow, and leaven, the society in which God has cast his lot. An unsocial, uncomplying, individualising life may be very flattering to pride; may serve as a salve to the conscience, and make a man fancy himself very good and pure; but there can be no doubt that such a course is a life-long sin, bringing dishonour on the blessed gospel of Christ, and hardening men’s hearts against its influence. (Dean Alford.)
The deceitfulness of sin
Sin, we must remember, has, properly speaking, no separate independent being of its own. It is the spiritual and moral quality either of dome act, or of the habitual inward tone of mind and spirit, of a moral agent; and it is a diseased and unnatural quality and state in such an agent which is described. But to this horrible work of sin men are, as the apostle’s word imply, lured on by the deceitfulness of sin. What then is this? Sin being that disordered acting of the spiritual nature in which the will chooses that which is against the will of God, the deceitfulness of sin must mean that there is a tendency in this disease to conceal its own presence, and so to shut out from the sight of him in whom it is acting the evil which is being accomplished within him. That there is this attribute about it the very smallest acquaintance with our nature and its actings may easily convince us. For what else are all those fair names for evil, those easy judgments concerning it, which are everywhere conventionally current, but the working of this its deceitful power? Why is it that the fondness of lust is termed gallantry or pleasure? Why is it that the cold and heedless selfishness of debauchery is talked about as spirit and gaiety, but because sin’s common working is thus utterly deceitful and untrue? But above all, this deceitfulness of sin may be seen in the false estimate which it leads men to form of their own moral and spiritual condition. And this in all ways. For, first, how does it blind men’s eyes to their own actual condition. Most men would be marvellously startled if they suddenly learned what was the clear view which their daily intimates possessed of their weaknesses and faults. And why? Surely for no other reason than because they habitually judge themselves so partially, and shut their eyes so weakly to their own besetting sins. And as this first deceit as to the actual presence of evil in their characters is thus practised upon most men, so too plainly are they deceived also as to its growth within themselves! How little do men who give themselves up to it perceive the increase of sin within themselves. And this must be so. For every allowance of evil weakens in its own degree that special power of conscience by which it passes sentence on our actions. But once more, it is not only the actual presence of the evil, or the increase of the work of evil within them, which is hidden from those on whom it is passing, but they perceive nothing whatever of its deep spiritual significance. It is altogether altering their relation to the unseen world around them, and they know not of it. The adopting love of Christ had gathered them into His family: His heart yearned over them; for His sake the Eternal Spirit wrought in them. He was ever beside them. But the deceitfulness of sin veils to them all these blessings. The heavenly world seems to withdraw itself. Nor is it only peace and joy that this man thus loses. This, again, increases in another way his own inability to see the evil of the sin which possesses him. For only under Christ’s Cross, only in the full sight of His love and holiness, and bitter agony for us, can we see anything of the true evil and hatefulness of sin; and so its deceitfulness, which prevents his seeing those, deludes him wholly till it robs him of his soul. If these things are happening around, and it may be among us, what practical lessons should they enforce on us?
1. Surely, the need of a resolute watchfulness against these seductions. They who would walk safely amidst the deceitful whispers of an enchanted land, or hold on their course in spite of sounds so falsely sweet that they have lured every listener to destruction, find no escape save in stopping their ears to the voice of the enchanter. And so must it be now with those who would escape from the deceitfulness of sin within them. They must “watch and be sober.”
2. But farther, this should be a time not only for self-searching, but for beginning resolutely in some par titular actions a course of more earnest service of God. And this course of more earnest service should not be any new way devised for ourselves, but the doing more completely and conscientiously, and as to God and our Lord Jesus Christ, our own appointed duty. (Bp. S. Wilberforce.)
The deceitfulness of sin
Though sin admits of no definition in itself, any more than sound or colour or odour, being, all four alike, primary ideas; it may be defined, i.e., indicated, by pointing out its relation to other things with which it is essentially connected.
1. St. Paul defines sin by comparing it with law: “Sin,” he says, “is the transgression of the law.” He means the law of God, the supreme Being, the sovereign power of the universe. God has prescribed us laws, which we may or may not observe. Sin is in man what deviation from their orbits would be in the heavenly bodies, if they were endowed with a will and a power of disobedience, and should shoot off from the paths in which they now move with so much order, beauty, and beneficence.
2. So again we may define sin by its effects, its “fruits,” its “wages,” as the apostle calls them; and how easy and how melancholy the definition. It is enough to fix the thoughts on one particular, and that is, death. How wide the sweep of its scythe! how universal the havoc which it makes!
3. Once more let us look at sin in relation to the process by which it accomplishes these deadly effects. How comes it, we ask, that while sin is acknowledged to be the prolific source of all misery, still men make light of and rush into it? Sin has undoubtedly made passion strong, the imagination wild, the conscience weak; and these are parts of the explanation; but not the whole. In addition to this, sin deceives them all through, and in connection with, the understanding, to which deception properly belongs. Men cheat themselves, or allow themselves to be cheated out of eternal life. With the strength of passion, and the stupor of conscience, and the weakness of will, has been united, in marvellous sympathy, a sad hallucination of the judgment; and so we have done, and practised, it may be, what we should have thought perfectly impossible, as long as our reason remained with us and what has ever since been a matter of painful and self-condemning recollection. And now, what is the conclusion of the whole matter? We have seen what sin is in relation to God and His law; what it is in its effects, and what it is in the process of its working. What now are the natural inferences from these points? Two at least present themselves, viz., that it is the greatest of all evils, and, at the same time, that it is the most insidious. The law, of which it is the transgression, is the prime law, the parent law, the law which makes all others possible, the law which develops moral agency, and binds the moral universe together. It is to the ethical, what gravitation is to the physical world. If sin were perfectly and completely triumphant, it would overthrow society as by an earthquake, shaking the deepest foundation of all things; and not all things in our world merely, but every other world also, where the distinction between right and wrong is known. If the Divine law is so comprehensive, fundamental, and absolutely necessary, then sin is a tremendous, and, in relation to all others, an incommensurable evil. The same conclusion is inevitable, when we look at it in its bearing, not on our moral but our sentient nature, our susceptibility to pleasure and pain, happiness and misery. All the suffering this moment in the world, whether of mind or body, whether open or secret, whether social or individual, whether from the recollection of the past, or the anticipation of the future, or the pressure of the present, springs from the root of sin. Oh, what folly to be fleeing from other evils--poverty, sickness, obscurity, shame, bereavement--and yet take no measures, while opportunity is afforded, to escape from the consequences of sin and its intrinsic evil! Oh, my friends, sin is a great evil; and it is as deceitful as it is great. It beguiles the soul it ruin. It is like those diseases which put the patient asleep, so that he slumbers into the very grave; or those which cause him to indulge fond hopes of life, up to the moment Death throws his unerring dart. It deceives in regard to a man’s particular acts, and in regard to his whole moral state. (W. Sparrow, LL. D.)
Deceitfulness of sin
1. It assumes false names.
2. It prefers false claims.
3. It offers false excuses.
4. It makes false resolutions. (J. Burns.)
Religion the great security against the delusions of sin
It is an old and just observation, “that no man ever became completely wicked at once.” But, notwithstanding all the kind restraints of conscience, of shame, and the terrors of futurity, which Providence has mercifully opposed to the progress of sin, it does, however, make wonderful advances in the world.
I. A MAN CANNOT ENTIRELY ABANDON HIMSELF TO THE COMMISSION OF EVIL, TILL HE HAS ABSOLUTELY EXCLUDED THE APPREHENSION OF GOD FROM HIS THOUGHTS. It is not usual ever for bad minds to put their dark workings in execution till every eye be closed; they shun the light they hate, because their deeds are evil. And is it possible that they should fly from the presence of a man fallible as themselves, and yet dare to stand the inspection of that Eye, to which the very darkness is no darkness at all; before which all hearts are open, and to which no secrets are hid? Again, it is observable that when a man has once begun to indulge the dispositions and habits of vice, he gradually withdraws himself from every object which may infer a reproach upon his conduct, or suggest to him the necessity of reforming it. He deserts the places of public adoration; he declines the society of pious and good men; and suppresses the exertion of every thought that bears upon it any visible stamp of virtue and religion. He guards himself against the apprehension of God, as against a dangerous companion. He finds himself incapable of advancing one step, while this stands in his way; it opposes his progress, as the armed angel did that of the ambitious prophet, and obstructs the accomplishment of his wicked views.
II. When the apprehension of the Deity is once suppressed, A MAN MAY BE LED, IMPERCEPTIBLY, BY THE DELUSIVE ATTRACTION OF ERROR, through each successive degree of impiety, till he arrive at last at a state of absolute insensibility and final impenitence. The bad affections, which were before chained down, are now let loose; and sin, deceitful enough in itself, gains an easy ascendant upon a mind which is willing to be deceived, and which dreads nothing so much as the necessity of subscribing to conviction. By what shallow reasonings, by what poor pretences, men suffer themselves to be cheated out of their virtue!
1. One pretence that is generally made is, “That religion contracts our faculties into narrow bounds; that, in order to enlarge them, it is necessary to burst her bands asunder, and cast away her cords from us; that every passion has its natural object, and that it is an infringement on natural liberty to restrain the indulgence of them; that, since life is at best so short, the best method of making it longer is to enjoy it; that the severities and rigours which are imposed by religious ordinance are only the inflictions of politic priests, who (being disabled by age and infirmity) would willingly make atonement for their own transgressions, by laying the severest restrictions on the liberties of others; that religion, in short, is the merest slavery; and that a man denies himself a pleasure which nature has allowed him, who does not give a full scope to the indulgence of every passion.” This method of arguing is attended by two very great and very evident defects.
(1) It is by no means evident (though it has been sometimes insinuated) that religion forbids the enjoyment of any delight which nature and reason allow; and whoever presumes to exceed the bounds prescribed by reason and nature, will be sure to meet the disappointment his presumption deserves. And it is notorious to a degree, that those who pretend to a greater latitude of enjoyment than the rest of mankind, have in fact the least real enjoyment of all.
(2) The austerities which are charged upon religion are trifling, in comparison of the repeated penances, mortifications, to which the libertine is reduced, by disappointed passions, a distempered constitution, and an unquiet mind.
2. Another deceit that men are apt to put upon themselves is, “That the sins they commit are so inconsiderable, that they will certainly be overlooked by the eye of infinite mercy; that they make such short incursions into the ways of wickedness, as to leave their retreat secure whenever they please; and that they are in no danger of falling into any flagrant or presumptuous act of evil.” This is so fatal a deceit, that one would almost be induced to think that it had been better for some men to have fallen immediately into a flagrant breach of duty (upon their first revolt from virtue) than to have crept on in the commission of what are usually called inconsiderable sins. And for this reason there is something so shocking to a mind that retains any sense of God and goodness in the reflections which succeed the commission of any greater crime, that a man recoils from it with the utmost horror and detestation, and is often carried backward to greater degrees of virtue by the very violence with which he fell from it. But, on the other hand, while a man continues to flatter himself that the sins he commits are trirling, he is gradually amused into an increase of wickedness and guilt. He goes on step by step, without perceiving the progression, and is deluded into his destruction by an opinion of his security.
3. And this brings on the last illusion in which sin is apt to involve the human mind; which is this--when the persons who have thought themselves so secure begin to look calmly back, and discover the unthought of advances they have made in vice, they stand amazed; and conclude it as impossible for them now to return, as they did before to have proceeded so far. (T. Ashton, D. D.)
The deceitfulness of sin
I. SIN HAS A SINGULAR POWER TO DECEIVE.
1. Its deceit may be seen in the manner of its approaches to us. It comes in a very subtle way, offering us advantage. Intellectually, it comes with a question, or an inquiry. Ought we not to question and to inquire? Are we to receive everything implicitly? The question is, however, full often the thin end of the wedge, which Satan drives home in the form of carnal wisdom, doubt, infidelity, and practical atheism. How tiny a drop of sinful distrust of God’s Word will poison all the thoughts of the soul! Sin frequently comes as a bare suggestion, or an imagination; an airy thing, spun of such stuff as dreams are made of. The thought fascinates, and then the spell of evil begins its deadly work; thought condenses into desire, and desire grows to purpose, and purpose ripens into act. I have known a sin insinuate itself by the way of the repulsion of another sin. A man will fly from pride to meanness, from moroseness to jollity, from obstinacy to laxity. Thus the shutting of one gate may open another, and one sin may crawl in as another creeps out.
2. Sin is deceitful in its object, for the object which it puts before us is not that which is its actual result. We are not tempted to provoke our Maker, or wilfully cast off the authority of righteousness. No, no; we are moved to do evil under the idea that some present good will come of it. Thus are we lured and bird-limed like the silly fowls of the air. The object set before us is delusive: the reward of sin may glitter, but it is not gold, and yet as gold it thrusts itself upon our erring judgment.
3. Sin is deceitful, next, in the name it wears. It is very apt to change its title: it seldom cares for its own true description. Almost every sin, nowadays, has a pretty name to be called by on Sundays, and silver slippers to wear in fine society.
4. Sin also shows its special deceitfulness in the arguments which it uses with men. Have you never heard its voice whispering to you, “Do not make much ado about nothing. Is it not a little one?” The point of the rapier is small, and for that reason the more deadly. Then will sin raise the question, and say, “Is this really wrong? May we not be too precise? Are not the times changed? Do not circumstances alter the command?” Sin is great at raising difficult points of casuistry. He that wills to do wrong is eager to find a loophole for himself.
5. This deceivableness is further seen in the excuses which it frames afterwards.
6. The deceitfulness of sin is seen again in its promises; for we shall not go far into sin without finding out how greatly it lies unto us.
7. Sin is deceitful in the influence which it carries with it. When yielded to, it tries to shut off the door of repentance.
II. THIS DECEITFULNESS HAS A HARDENING POWER OVER THE HEART.
1. Partly through our familiarity with sin. We may look at hateful sin till we love it.
2. Then there follows on the back of this insensibility to sin an insensibility to the gospel.
III. THIS DECEITFULNESS OF SIN, AND THIS TENDENCY TO BECOME HARDENED, NEED TO BE FOUGHT AGAINST.
1. The way to keep from hardness of heart, and from the deceitfulness of sin, is to believe. You shall find that, just in proportion as faith grows strong, the deceit of sin will be baffled.
2. If you would be saved from the deceitfulness of sin confess it honestly before God. Pray that sin may appear sin: it cannot appear in a worse light. Thus thou shalt not so readily be caught in its traps and lures.
3. Cultivate great tenderness of heart. Do not believe that to grieve over sin is lowering to manhood; indulge thyself largely in sweet repentance. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The lies of the temptress
There is a possible reference here, in this personification of sin, as leading men away by lies, to the story of the First Temptation. There, the weapons of the Tempter were falsehoods.
I. FIRST, THEN, MY TEXT SUGGESTS TO ME SIN’S LIES ABOUT THE BAIT. The old story is typical, and may stand as a welldeveloped specimen of the whole set of evil deeds. Either for the sake of winning a desirable object, or for the sake of avoiding some undesirable issue; we never do the wrong thing, and go away from God, except under a delusion that we shall be better and happier when we have got the desired thing than we should be without it. Now I do not mean to say that there is not a very solid reality in the pleasurable results of a great many wrong things. If a man chooses to sin to gratify sense, he does get the sensuous enjoyment out of it. But there is another question to be asked. You have got the thing you wanted; have you,--what then? Are you much the better for it? Are you satisfied with it? Was it as good as it looked when it was not yours? Is not the giant painted on the canvas outside the caravan a great deal bigger than the reality inside, when you go in to look at him? Is there anything that we have got by doing wrong for it, howsoever it may have satisfied the immediate impulse in obedience to whose tyrannous requirements we were stirred up to grasp it, which is worth, in solid enjoyment, what we gave for it? Having attained the desire, do we not find that it satisfies not us, but only some small part of us? If I might so say, we are like those men that old stories used to tell about that had swallowed some loathly worm. We feed the foul creeping thing within us, but ourselves continue hungry. Besides, sin’s pleasures are false, because along with them all comes an after tang that takes the sweetness out of them. There is only one thing that promises less than it performs, and which can satisfy a man’s soul; and that is cleaving to God.
II. AGAIN, NOTE THE LIES ABOUT THE HOOK. “Ye shall not surely die.” I suppose that if any man had clear before him at the moment of any temptation, howsoever fiery and strong, the whole sweep of the consequences that are certainly involved in his yielding to it, he would pause on the edge, and durst not do it. But sin suppresses facts; and here are a few of the barbed points that she hides. She does not tell you anything about outward consequences. Every year there come into Manchester young men who fancy they can play the game and not pay the stakes. She suppresses the action of conscience. There is nothing more awful than the occasional swiftness and completeness of the revulsion of feeling between the moment before and the moment after. She suppresses the action of sin upon character. You cannot do a wrong thing, “departing from the living God,” without thereby leaving an indelible mark upon your whole spiritual and moral nature. Loftier aspirations die out of you, the incapacity for better actions is confirmed, and that awful mysterious thing that we call “habit” comes in to ensure that once done, twice will be probable, and twice done, thrice and innumerable times will be almost certain. There is nothing more mystical and solemn about our lives than the way in which unthought of and trifling deeds harden themselves into habits, and dominate us, whether we will or no. And so the sin which once stood in front of us with a smile and tempted us, because it was desirable, afterwards comes behind us with a frown, and is a taskmaster with a whip. The flowery fetters become iron, and the thing once done gets to be our master, and we are held and bound in the chain of our sins. And more than that, there is the necessity for perpetual increase, heavier doses, more pungent forms of evil, in order to titillate the increasing insensitiveness of the nature. You take a tiger cub into your house when it is little; it is prettily striped, graceful in its motions, playful and affectionate; and it grows up, and when it is big, it is the master of you, if it is not the murderer of you! Do not you take the little sin into your hearts. It will grow, and its claws will grow, and its ferocity will grow. And now all these consequences suggest the last of sin’s suppressions that I would specify. They all make a future retribution a probable thing. And that future retribution is a plain and necessary inference from any belief at all in a God, and in a future life. But the tempting sin has nothing to say about that future judgment, or if it has, has only this to say: “Ye shall not die.” You are like sailors that get into the spirit room in a ship when she is driving on the rocks, and, as long as you can get the momentary indulgence, never mind about what is coming.
III. THEN NOTICE AGAIN, THE LIES AS TO THE CRIMINALITY OF THE DEED, “Hath God said, Ye shall not eat?” is the insinuated suggestion that creeps into most men’s minds. Just as housebreakers carry some drugged meat for the house-dogs, when they intend to break into some lonely farmhouse, so we are all adepts in applying gentle phrases to our own evil, while, if the same thing is done by anybody else, we shall flame up in indignation, as David did when Nathan told him about the man and his one ewe lamb. Therefore, it comes to this--do not you trust to instinctive utterances of inclination calling itself conscience. Remember that you can bribe conscience to say anything but that it is right to do wrong. You will get it to say anything that you teach it about what is wrong and what is not. And therefore you must find a better guide than conscience. You bare to enlighten it and educate it and check it, and keep it wakeful and suspicious, as the price of purity. The same set of lies about the criminality of our actions operates with still greater effect after the commission. I was speaking a moment or two ago about the sudden waking of conscience when the deed is done. Bat there is a worse thing than that, and that is when conscience does not wake.
IV. THE LAST WORD THAT! WISH TO SAY IS IN REFERENCE TO THE FALSEHOODS OF SIN IN REGARD TO THE DELIVERANCE THEREFROM. These other lies, like bubbles, sometimes burst. The first of them, about the pleasures, generally bursts as soon as the thing is done. The others about the pains and the criminality often disappear, when pricked by some thought of God and contact with Him. But the repertory of the deceiver is not empty yet. And she can turn her haled and bring out another set of lies, in order to retain her dominion. For the sin that said to you before you did it: “ There is no harm in it; you do not need to do it again; it is only just once and it will be done with,” says to you, after you have done it, when you begin to feel that it was wrong, and try to shake off its guilt and power: “You have done it howl. You never can get away any more. The thing is past, and neither in regard of its consequences nor in regard of its power will you ever escape from it. What you have written you have written. You are mine!” And so she lays her iron claw upon the man and holds him. So sin lies to us just as she lied before. And I have to crone with the message that, of all her falsehoods none is more false and fatal than the falsehood that a sinful man cannot turn from his evil; conquer all his transgression; begin a new happy, clean life; and be sure of forgiveness from his Father in heaven. “Jesus Christ, the faithful and true witness,” has died that it may be possible to bring to us pure and true promises of lasting and satisfying blessedness, and to avert from each of us, if we will trust in the power of His blood, the worst and penal consequences of our transgression, and, if we will trust in the power of His imparted Spirit, to make our future altogether unlike our past, and deliver us from the habit and entail of our sins. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
The devices by which sin beguiles
1. One of the most obvious ways in which it works this mischief is, by diverting the attention from that to which it ought to be directed. Man’s power of attention is limited; it cannot be directed to all things at the same time; it must take them in succession. Neither should it bestow itself equally upon all things, but graduate its time and earnestness according to circumstance. Of this feature of our constitution sin, taking advantage, so fills the mind with other things, that no room is left for the things of religion. A man is thus made to forget God, by the simple obtrusion of other things upon his attention.
2. Sin deceives also by the false and captivating colours in which it decks out things forbidden. Their beauty was not their own. They wore a mask. It is no very uncommon thing for certain visions and appearances to pass before the mind, under the influence of disease, which wear all the lineaments of persons and things with which we are familiar, and yet possess no reality whatever. But not to take so violent a case for illustration; let us simply reflect how depression or hilarity of animal spirits affects all our views of things. The one will hang the brightest heaven with mourning; the other will shed an air of cheerfulness over the deepest gloom. Now it is somewhat in this way that sin deludes. It causes things to appear in unreal colours.
3. A third way, in which sin deceives, is by making us miscalculate time. What is our life? It is compared to a “watch in the night,” to a “tale that is told,” to a “vapour which appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away,” to a “race that is run,” to a “ battle that is fought,” to the “labour of the day,” to the dimensions of a “span.” Yet, notwithstanding, may I not with all confidence ask whether his own feelings have not often virtually given the lie to these statements? Thus does sin deceive the young. To say nothing of the uncertainty of life, they are in error in regard to the length of it.
4. This property, which is specially named in the text, arises from our being creatures of habit. By the law of habit, the doing of a thing once, makes it easier to do it again, and creates an inclination towards the repetition of the act. Notice the manner in which the spider endeavours to secure the unwary insect, which has fallen into its web, and you have a pretty accurate representation of the process. One attenuated thread after another is woven round it, each easily broken, each in itself too trifli
