PEARLS from PHILPOT - Volume 1

Man's religion & God's religion "That no flesh should glory in His presence." 1 Corinthians 1:29 Man's religion is to build up the creature. God's religion is to throw the creature down in the dust of self-abasement, and to glorify Christ. What a mystery are you! "So I find this law at work—When I want to do good, evil is right there with me." Rom. 7:21 Are you not often a mystery to yourself? Warm one moment—cold the next! Abasing yourself one hour— exalting yourself the following! Loving the world, full of it, steeped up to your head in it today—crying, groaning, and sighing for a sweet manifestation of the love of God tomorrow! Brought down to nothingness, covered with shame and confusion, on your knees before you leave your room—filled with pride and self importance before you have got down stairs! Despising the world, and willing to give it all up for one taste of the love of Jesus when in solitude—trying to grasp it with both hands when in business! What a mystery are you! Touched by love—and stung with hatred! Possessing a little wisdom—and a great deal of folly! Earthly minded—and yet having the affections in heaven! Pressing forward—and lagging behind! Full of sloth—and yet taking the kingdom with violence! And thus the Spirit, by a process which we may feel but cannot adequately describe—leads us into the mystery of the two natures perpetually struggling and striving against each other in the same bosom. So that one man cannot more differ from another, than the same man differs from himself. But the mystery of the kingdom of heaven is this— that our carnal mind undergoes no alteration, but maintains a perpetual war with grace. And thus, the deeper we sink in self abasement under a sense of our vileness, the higher we rise in a knowledge of Christ, and the blacker we are in our own view—the more lovely does Jesus appear. What stupid blockheads! "Are you still so dull?" Jesus asked them. Matthew 15:16 What lessons we need day by day to teach us anything aright, and how it is for the most part, "line upon line, line upon line—here a little, and there a little." O . . . what slow learners! what dull, forgetful scholars! what ignoramuses! what stupid blockheads! what stubborn pupils! Surely no scholar at a school, old or young, could learn so little of natural things as we seem to have learned of spiritual things after . . . so many years instruction, so many chapters read, so many sermons heard, so many prayers put up, so much talking about religion. How small, how weak is the amount of growth—compared with all we have read and heard and talked about! But it is a mercy that the Lord saves whom He will save—and that we are saved by free grace—and free grace alone! Take me as I am with all my sin and shame "Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved." Jer. 17:14 Here is this sin! Save me from it! Here is this snare! Break it to pieces! Here is this lust! Lord, subdue it! Here is this temptation! Deliver me out of it! Here is my proud heart! Lord, humble it! Here is my unbelieving heart! Take it away, and give me faith; give me submission to Your mind and will. Take me as I am with all my sin and shame and work in me everything well pleasing in Your sight. Nothing but a huge clod of dust "Set your affection on things above—not on things on the earth." Colossians 3:2 Everything upon earth, as viewed by the eyes of the Majesty of heaven—is base and paltry. Earth is after all, nothing but a huge clod of dust, and as such, as insignificant in the eyes of its Maker as the small dust of the balance, or the drop of the bucket. What, then, are . . . its highest objects, its loftiest aims, its grandest pursuits, its noblest employments, in the sight of Him who inhabits eternity; but base and worthless? Vanity is stamped on all earth's attainments. All earthly pursuits and high accomplishments . . . wealth, rank, learning, power, or pleasure, end in death! The breath of God's displeasure soon lays low in the grave all that is rich and mighty, high and proud. But that effectual work of grace on the heart, whereby the chosen vessels of mercy are delivered from the power of darkness and translated into the kingdom of God's dear Son, calls them out of . . . those low, groveling pursuits, those earthly toys, those base and sensual lusts in which other men seek at once their happiness and their ruin. How can they escape? "He will keep the feet of His saints." 1 Samuel 2:9 The Lord sees His poor scattered pilgrims traveling through a valley of tears—journeying through a waste-howling wilderness—a path beset with baits, traps, and snares in every direction. How can they escape? Why, the Lord 'keeps their feet'. He carries them through every rough place—as a tender parent carries a little child. When about to fall—He graciously lays His everlasting arms underneath them. And when tottering and stumbling, and their feet ready to slip—He mercifully upholds them from falling altogether. But do you think that He has not different ways for different feet? The God of creation has not made two flowers, nor two leaves upon a tree alike—and will He cause all His people to walk in precisely the same path? No. We have . . . each our path, each our troubles, each our trials, each peculiar traps and snares laid for our feet. And the wisdom of the all-wise God is shown by His eyes being in every place—marking the footsteps of every pilgrim—suiting His remedies to meet their individual case and necessity—appearing for them when nobody else could do them any good—watching so tenderly over them, as though the eyes of His affection were bent on one individual—and carefully noting the goings of each, as though all the powers of the Godhead were concentrated on that one person to keep him from harm! God will meet all your needs "And my God will meet all your needs according to His glorious riches in Christ Jesus." Phil. 4:19 Until we are brought into the depths of poverty, we shall never know nor value Christ's riches. If, then, you are a child of God, a poor and needy soul, a tempted and tried believer in Christ, "God will meet all your needs." They may be very great. It may seem to you, sometimes, as though there were not upon all the face of the earth such a wretch as you—as though there never could be a child of God in your state . . . so dark, so stupid, so blind and ignorant, so proud and worldly, so presumptuous and hypocritical, so continually backsliding after idols, so continually doing things that you know are hateful in God's sight. But whatever your need be—it is not beyond the reach of divine supply! And the deeper your need, the more is Jesus glorified in supplying it. Do not say then, that . . . your case is too bad, your needs are too many, your perplexities too great, your temptations too powerful. No case can be too bad! No temptations can be too powerful! No sin can be too black! No perplexity can be too hard! No state in which the soul can get, is beyond the reach of the almighty and compassionate love, that burns in the breast of the Redeemer! That sympathizing, merciful, feeling, tender, and compassionate heart "For we do not have a High Priest who is unable to sympathize with our infirmities." Hebrews 4:15 The child of God, spiritually taught and convinced, is deeply sensible of his infirmities. Yes, that he is encompassed with infirmities—that he is nothing else but infirmities. And therefore the great High Priest to whom he comes as a burdened sinner—to whom he has recourse in the depth of his extremity—and at whose feet he falls overwhelmed with a sense of his helplessness, sin, misery, and guilt—is so suitable to him as one able to sympathize with his infirmities. We would, if left to our own conceptions, naturally imagine that Jesus is too holy to look down in compassion on a filthy, guilty wretch like ourselves. Surely, surely, He will spurn us from His feet. Surely, surely, His holy eyes cannot look upon us in our . . . blood, guilt, filth, wretchedness, misery, and shame. Surely, surely, He cannot bestow . . . one heart's thought, one moment's sympathy, or feel one spark of love towards those who are so unlike Him. Nature, sense, and reason would thus argue, "I must be holy—perfectly holy—for Jesus to love; I must be pure—perfectly pure—spotless and sinless, for Jesus to think of. But . . . that I, a sinful, guilty, defiled wretch; that I, encompassed with infirmities; that I, whose heart is a cage of unclean birds; that I, stained and polluted with a thousand iniquities; that I can have any inheritance in Him—or that He can have any love or compassion towards me—nature, sense, reason, and human religion in all its shapes and forms, revolts from the idea." It is as though Jesus specially address Himself to the poor, burdened child of God who feels his infirmities, who cannot boast of his own wisdom, strength, righteousness, and consistency—but is all weakness and helplessness. It seems as if He would address Himself to the case of such a helpless wretch—and pour a sweet cordial into his bleeding conscience. We, the children of God—we, who each knows his own plague and his own sore—we, who carry about with us day by day a body of sin and death, that makes us lament, sigh, and groan—we, who know painfully what it is to be encompassed with infirmities—we, who come to His feet as being nothing and having nothing but sin and woe—"we do not have a High Priest who is unable to sympathize with our infirmities," but One who carries in His bosom that . . . sympathizing, merciful, feeling, tender, and compassionate heart. Why are you cast down, O my soul? "Why are you cast down, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, my Savior and my God." Psalm 42:11 Do you forget, O soul, that the way to heaven is a very strait and narrow path—too narrow for you to carry your sins in it with you? God sees it good that you should be cast down. You were getting very proud, O soul. The world had gotten hold of your heart. You were seeking great things for yourself. You were secretly roving away from the Lord. You were too much lifted up in SELF. The Lord has sent you these trials and difficulties and allowed these temptations to fall upon you, to bring you down from your state of false security. There is reason therefore, even to praise God for being cast down, and for being so disturbed. How this opens up parts of God's Word which you never read before with any feeling. How it gives you sympathy and communion with the tried and troubled children of God. How it weans and separates you from dead professors. How it brings you in heart and affection, out of the world that lies in wickedness. And how it engages your thoughts, time after time, upon the solemn matters of eternity—instead of being a prey to every idle thought and imagination, and tossed up and down upon a sea of vanity and folly. But, above all, when there is a sweet response from the Lord, and the power of divine things is inwardly felt, in enabling us to hope in God, and to praise His

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PEARLS from PHILPOT - Volume 1

J.C. Philpot

J.C. Philpot (1802 - 1869)

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