PEARLS from PHILPOT - Volume 5

He can crawl like a serpent, and he can roar like a lion! "So that Satan will not outsmart us. For we are very familiar with his evil schemes." 2 Cor. 2:11 Satan well knows both how to allure and how to attack; for he can crawl like a serpent, and he can roar like a lion! He has snares whereby he entangles, and fiery darts whereby he impales. Most men are easily led captive by him at his will, ensnared without the least difficulty in the traps that he lays for their feet; for they are as ready to be caught as he is to catch them! Why would Satan need to roar against them as a lion, if he can wind himself around them and bite them as a serpent? If you want to see what sin really is To cast the sinning angels out of heaven; to banish Adam from Paradise; to destroy the old world by a flood; to burn Sodom and Gomorrah with fire from heaven– these examples of God's displeasure against sin were not sufficient to express His condemnation of it. He would therefore take another way of making it manifest. And what was this? By sending His own Son out of His bosom, and offering Him as a sacrifice for sin upon the tree at Calvary, He would make it manifest how He abhorred sin, and how His righteous character must forever condemn it. See here the love of God to poor guilty man in not sparing His own Son; and yet the hatred of God against sin, in condemning it in the death of Jesus. It is almost as if God said, "If you want to see what sin really is, you cannot see it in the depths of hell. I will show you sin in blacker colors still– you shall see it in the sufferings of My dear Son; in His agonies of body and soul; and in what He as a holy, innocent Lamb endured under My wrath, when He consented to take the sinner's place." What wondrous wisdom, what depths of love, what treasures of mercy, what heights of grace were thus revealed and brought to light in God's unsparing condemnation of sin, and yet in His full and free pardon of the sinner! If you have ever had a view by faith of the suffering Son of God in the garden and upon the cross; if you have ever seen the wrath of God due to you, falling upon the head of the God-Man; and viewed a bleeding, agonizing Immanuel; then you have seen and felt in the depths of your conscience what a dreadful thing sin is. Then the broken-hearted child of God looks unto Him whom he has pierced, and mourns and grieves bitterly for Him, as for a firstborn son who has died. Under this sight he feels what a dreadful thing sin is. "Oh," he says, "did God afflict His dear Son? Did Jesus, the darling of God, endure all these sufferings and sorrows to save my soul from the bottomless pit? O, can I ever hate sin enough? Can I ever grieve and mourn over it enough? Can my stony heart ever be dissolved into contrition enough, when by faith I see the agonies, and hear the groans of the suffering, bleeding Lamb of God?" Christians hate their sins. They hate that sinful, that dreadfully sinful flesh of theirs which has so often, which has so continually, betrayed them into sin. And thus they join with God in passing condemnation upon the whole of their flesh; upon all its actings and workings; upon all its thoughts and words and deeds; and hate it as the prolific parent of that sin which crucified Christ, and torments and plagues them. The hard-hearted, cold-blooded, wise-headed professor We are surrounded with snares. Temptations lie spread every moment in our path. These snares and these temptations are so suitable to the lusts of our flesh, that we would certainly fall into them, and be overcome by them, but for the restraining providence or the preserving grace of God. The Christian sees this; the Christian feels this. The hard-hearted, cold-blooded, wise-headed professor sees no snares. He is entangled in them, he falls by them, and not repenting of his sins or forsaking them, he makes utter shipwreck concerning the faith. The child of God . . . sees the snare, feels the temptation, knows the evil of his heart, and is conscious that if God does not hold him up, he shall stumble and fall. As then a burnt child dreads the fire, so he dreads the consequence of being left for a moment to himself; and the more is he afraid that he shall fall. If his eyes are more widely opened to see . . . the purity of God, the blessedness of Christ, the efficacy of atoning blood, and the beauties of holiness, the more also does he see the evil of sin, the dreadful consequences of being entangled therein. And not only so, but his own helplessness and weakness and inability to stand against temptation in his own strength. And all these feelings combine to raise up a more earnest cry, "Hold me up, and I shall be safe!" A stable, a hovel, a hedge, any unadorned corner This is what the Sovereign Lord says: "Although I sent them far away among the nations and scattered them among the countries, yet I will be to them as a little sanctuary in the countries where they have gone." Ezekiel 11:16 Every place in which the Lord manifests Himself, is a sanctuary to a child of God. Jesus is now our sanctuary, for He is "the true place of worship that was built by the Lord and not by human hands." We see the power and glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ. Every place is a sanctuary, where God manifests Himself in power and glory to the soul. Moses, doubtless, had often passed by the bush which grew in Horeb; it was but a common thorn bush, in no way distinguished from the other bushes of the thicket. But on one solemn occasion it was all "in a flame of fire," for "the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire" out of the midst; and though it burned with fire, it was not consumed. God being in the bush, the ground round about was holy, and Moses was bidden to take off his shoes from his feet. Was not this a sanctuary to Moses? It was, for a holy God was there! Thus wherever God manifests Himself, that becomes a sanctuary to a believing soul. We don't need places made holy by the ceremonies of man; but places made holy by the presence of God! Then a stable, a hovel, a hedge, any unadorned corner may be, and is a sanctuary, when God fills your heart with His sacred presence, and causes every holy feeling and gracious affection to spring up in your soul. Poor, miserable, paltry works of a polluted worm! "We are all infected and impure with sin. When we proudly display our righteous deeds, we find they are but filthy rags. Like autumn leaves, we wither and fall. And our sins, like the wind, sweep us away." Isaiah 64:6 We once thought that we could gain heaven by our own righteousness. We strictly attended to our religious duties, and sought by these and various other means to recommend ourselves to the favor of God, and induce Him to reward us with heaven for our sincere attempts to obey His commandments. And by these religious performances we thought we would surely be able to make a ladder whereby we could climb up to heaven. This was our tower of Babel, whose top was to reach unto heaven, and by mounting which, we thought to scale the stars. But the same Lord who stopped the further building of the tower of Babel, by confounding their speech and scattering them abroad on the face of the earth; began to confound our speech, so that we could not pray, or talk, or boast as before; and to scatter all our religion like the chaff of the threshing floor. Our mouths were stopped; we became guilty before God; and our bricks and mortar became a pile of confusion! When, then, the Lord was pleased to discover to our souls by faith, His being, majesty, greatness, holiness, and purity; and thus gave us a corresponding sense of our filthiness and folly; then all our creature religion and natural piety which we once counted as gain, we began to see was but loss; that our very religious duties and observances, so far from being for us, were actually against us; and instead of pleading for us before God as so many deeds of righteousness, were so polluted and defiled by sin perpetually mixed with them, that our very prayers were enough to sink us into hell, had we no other iniquities to answer for in heart, lip or life. But when we had a view by faith of the Person, work, love, and grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, then we began more plainly and clearly to see, with what religious toys we had been so long amusing ourselves, and what is far worse, mocking God by them. We had been secretly despising . . . Jesus and His sufferings, Jesus and His death, Jesus and His righteousness, and setting up the poor, miserable, paltry works of a polluted worm in the place of the finished work of the Son of God. Mere toys and baubles True religion must be everything or nothing with us. In religion, indifference is ruin; neglect is destruction. Of all losses, the loss of the soul is the only one that is utterly irreparable and irremediable. You may lose property, but you may recover the whole or a portion of it; you may lose health, but you may be restored to a larger measure of bodily strength than before your illness; you may lose friends, but you may obtain new ones, and those more sincere and valuable than any whom you have lost. But if you lose your soul, what is to make up for that loss? Do you ever feel what a tremendous stake heaven or hell is? Have you ever felt that to gain heaven is to gain everything that can make the soul eternally happy; and to lose heaven is not only to lose eternal bliss, but to sink down into . . . unfathomable, everlasting, unutterable woe? It is this believing sight and pressing sense of eternal things; it is this weighty, at times overpowering, feeling that they carry in their bosom an immortal soul, which often makes the children of God view the things of time and sense as . . . mere toys and baubles, trifles lighter than vanity, and pursuits empty as air, and gives them to feel that the things of eternity are the only solid, enduring realities. Heavenly dew "My words descend like dew." Deuteronomy 32:2 The dew falls imperceptibly. No man can see it fall. Yet its effects are visible in the morning. So it is with the blessing of God upon His Word. It penetrates the heart without noise; it sinks deep into the conscience without anything visible going on. And as the dew opens the pores of the earth and refreshes the ground after the heat of a burning day, making vegetation lift up its drooping head, so it is with the blessing of God resting upon the soul. Heavenly dew comes imperceptibly, falls quietly, and is manifested chiefly by its effects, as softening, opening, penetrating, and secretly causing every grace of the Spirit to lift up its drooping head. Whenever the Lord may have been pleased to bless our souls, either in hearing, in reading, or in private meditation, have not these been some of the effects? Silent, quiet, imperceptible, yet producing an evident impression . . . softening the heart when hard, refreshing it when dry, melting it when obdurate, secretly keeping the soul alive, so that it is neither withers up by the burning sun of temptation, nor dies for lack of grace. "May God give you the dew of heaven." Genesis 27:28 Coming up from the wilderness "Who is this coming up from the wilderness, leaning upon her Beloved?" Song of Solomon 8:5 To come up from the wilderness, is to come up out of OURSELVES; for we are ourselves the wilderness. It is our wilderness heart that makes the world what it is to us . . . our own barren frames; our own bewildered minds; our own worthlessness and inability; our own lack of spiritual fruitfulness; our own trials, temptations, and exercises; our own hungering and thirsting after righteousness. In a word, it is what passes in our own bosom that makes the world to us a dreary desert. Carnal people find the world no wilderness. It is an Eden to them! Or at least they try hard to make it so. They seek all their pleasure from, and build all their happiness upon it. Nor do they dream of any other harvest of joy and delight, but what may be repaid in this 'happy valley', where youth, health, and good spirits are ever imagining new scenes of gratification. But the child of grace, exercised with a thousand difficulties, passing through many temporal and spiritual sorrows, and inwardly grieved with his own lack of heavenly fruitfulness, finds the wilderness within. But he still comes up out of it, and this he does by looking upward with believing eyes to Him who alone can bring him out. He comes up out of his own righteousness, and shelters himself under Christ's righteousness. He comes up out of his own strength, and trusts to Christ's strength. He comes up out of his own wisdom, and hangs upon Jesus' wisdom. He comes up out of his own tempted, tried, bewildered, and perplexed condition, to find rest and peace in the finished work of the Son of God. And thus he comes up out of the wilderness of self, not actually, but experimentally. Every desire of his soul to be delivered from his 'wilderness sickening sight' that he has of sin and of himself as a sinner. Every aspiration after Jesus, every longing look, earnest sigh, piteous cry, or laboring groan, all are a coming up from the wilderness. His turning his back upon an ungodly world; renouncing its pleasures, its honors, its pride, and its ambition; seeking communion with Jesus as his chief delight; and accounting all things but loss and rubbish for the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus his Lord as revealed to his soul by the power of God; this, also, is coming up from the wilderness. When we gaze upon the lifeless corpse From the cradle to the coffin, affliction and sorrow are the appointed lot of man. He comes into the world with a wailing cry, and he often leaves it with an agonizing groan! Rightly is this earth called "a valley of tears," for it is wet with them in infancy, youth, manhood, and old age. In every land, in every climate, scenes of misery and wretchedness everywhere meet the eye, besides those deeper griefs and heart-rending sorrows which lie concealed from all observation. So that we may well say of the life of man that, like Ezekiel's scroll, it is "written with lamentations, and mourning and woe."

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PEARLS from PHILPOT - Volume 5

J.C. Philpot

J.C. Philpot (1802 - 1869)

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