PEARLS from PHILPOT - Volume 8

My leanness, my leanness, woe unto me! "My leanness, my leanness, woe unto me!" Isaiah 24:16 There is no more continual source of lamentation and mourning to a child of God than a sense of his own barrenness. He would be fruitful in every good word and work. But when he contrasts . . . his own miserable unprofitableness, his coldness and deadness, his proneness to evil, his backwardness to good, his daily wanderings and departings from God, his depraved affections, his stupid frames, his sensual desires, his carnal projects, and his earthy grovelings, with what he sees and knows should be the fruit that should grow upon a fruitful branch in the only true Vine, he sinks down under a sense of his own wretched barrenness and unfruitfulness. Yet what was the effect produced by all this upon his own soul? To wean him from the creature; to divert him from looking to any for help or hope, but the Lord Himself. It is in this painful way that the Lord often, if not usually, cuts us off from all human props, even the nearest and dearest, that we may lean wholly and solely on Himself. Those poor stupid people! "The world knows us not." 1 John 3:1 Both the openly profane world, and the professing world, are grossly ignorant of the children of God. Their . . . real character and condition, state and standing, joys and sorrows, mercies and miseries, trials and deliverances, hopes and fears, afflictions and consolations, are entirely hidden from their eyes. The world knows nothing of the motives and feelings which guide and actuate the children of God. It views them as a set of gloomy, morose, melancholy beings, whose tempers are soured by false and exaggerated views of religion—who have pored over the thoughts of hell and heaven until some have frightened themselves into despair, and others have puffed up their vain minds with an imaginary conceit of their being especial favorites of the Almighty. "They are really," it says, "no better than other folks, if so good. But they have such contracted minds—are so obstinate and bigoted with their poor, narrow, prejudiced views—that wherever they come they bring disturbance and confusion." But why this harsh judgment? Because the world knows nothing of the spiritual feelings which actuate the child of grace, making him act so differently from the world which thus condemns him. It cannot understand our sight and sense of the exceeding sinfulness of sin—and that is the reason why we will not run riot with them in the same course of ungodliness. It does not know with what a solemn weight eternal things rest upon our minds—and that that is the cause why we cannot join with them in pursuing so eagerly the things of the world, and living for time as they do—instead of living for eternity. Being unable to enter into the spiritual motives and gracious feelings which actuate a living soul, and the movements of divine life continually stirring in a Christian breast, they naturally judge us from their own point of view, and condemn what they cannot understand. You may place a horse and a man upon the same hill—while the man would be looking at the woods and fields and streams—the horse would be feeding upon the grass at his feet. The horse, if it could reason, would say, "What a fool my master is! How he is staring and gaping about! Why does he not sit down and open his basket of provisions—for I know he has it with him, for I carried it—and feed as I do?" So the worldling says, "Those poor stupid people, how they are spending their time in going to chapel, and reading the Bible in their gloomy, melancholy way. Religion is all very well—and we ought all to be religious before we die—but they make so much of it. Why don't they enjoy more of life? Why don't they amuse themselves more with its innocent, harmless pleasures—be more gay, cheerful, and sociable, and take more interest in those things which so interest us?" The reason why the world thus wonders at us is because it knows us not, and therefore cannot understand that we have . . . sublimer feelings, nobler pleasures, and more substantial delights, than ever entered the soul of a worldling! Christian! the more you are conformed to the image of Christ—the more separated you are from the world, the less will it understand you. If we kept closer to the Lord and walked more in holy obedience to the precepts of the gospel, we would be more misunderstood than even we now are! It is our worldly conformity that makes the world understand many of our movements and actions so well. But if our movements were more according to the mind of Christ—if we walked more as the Lord walked when here below—we would leave the world in greater ignorance of us than we leave it now—for the hidden springs of our life would be more out of its sight, our testimony against it more decided, and our separation from it more complete. We were not always a set of poor mopes "Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God." Col. 3:1-3 Men's pursuits and pleasures differ as widely as their station or disposition—but a life of selfish gratification reigns and rules in all. Now it is by this death that we die unto . . . the things of time and sense; to all that charms the natural mind of man; to the pleasures and pursuits of life; to that busy, restless world which once held us so fast and firm in its embrace—and whirled us round and round within its giddy dance. Let us look back. We were not always a set of poor mopes—as the world calls us. We were once as merry and as gay as the merriest and gayest of them. But what were we really and truly with all our mirth? Dead to God—alive to sin. Dead to everything holy and divine—alive to everything vain and foolish, light and trifling, carnal and sensual—if not exactly vile and abominable. Our natural life was with all of us a life of gratifying our senses—with some of us, perhaps, chiefly of pleasure and worldly happiness—with others a life of covetousness, or ambition, or self-righteousness. Sin once put forth its intense power and allured us—and we followed like the fool to the stocks. Sin charmed—and we listened to its seductive wiles. Sin held out its bait—and we too greedily, too heedlessly swallowed the hook. "May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world." Galatians 6:14 To walk after the flesh "There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." Rom. 8:1 To walk after the flesh carries with it the idea of the flesh going before us—as our leader, guide, and example—and our following close in its footsteps, so that wherever it drags or draws we move after it, as the needle after the magnet. To walk after the flesh, then, is to move step by step in implicit obedience to . . . the commands of the flesh, the lusts of the flesh, the inclinations of the flesh, and the desires of the flesh, whatever shape they assume, whatever garb they wear, whatever name they may bear. To walk after the flesh is to be ever pursuing, desiring, and doing the things that please the flesh, whatever aspect that flesh may wear or whatever dress it may assume—whether molded and fashioned after the grosser and more flagrant ways of the profane world—or the more refined and deceptive religion of the professing church. But are the grosser and more manifest sinners the only people who may be said to walk after the flesh? Does not all human religion, in all its varied forms and shapes, come under the sweep of this all-devouring sword? Yes! Every one who is entangled in and led by a fleshly religion, walks as much after the flesh as those who are abandoned to its grosser indulgences. Sad it is, yet not more sad than true, that false religion has slain its thousands, if open sin has slain its ten thousands. To walk after the flesh, whether it be in the grosser or more refined sense of the term, is the same in the sight of God. The very thought is appalling! "Once you were alienated from God and were His enemies, separated from Him by your evil thoughts and actions." Colossians 1:21 All man's sins, comparatively speaking, are but 'motes in the sunbeam' compared with this giant sin of enmity against God. A man may be given up to fleshly indulgences; he may sin against his fellow creature—may rob, plunder, oppress, even kill his fellow man. But viewed in a spiritual light, what are they compared with the dreadful, the damnable sin of enmity against the great and glorious Majesty of heaven? This is a sin that lives beyond the grave! Many sins, though not their consequences, die with man's body, because they are bodily sins. But this is a sin that goes into eternity with him, and flares up like a mighty volcano from the very depths of the bottomless pit! Yes, it is the very sin of devils, which therefore binds guilty man down with them in the same eternal chains, and consigns him to the same place of torment! O the unutterable enmity of the heart against the living God! The very thought is appalling! How utterly ruined, then, how wholly lost must that man's state and case be, who lives and dies as he comes into the world . . . unchanged, unrenewed, unregenerated! I will not dwell longer upon this gloomy subject, on this sad exhibition of human wickedness and misery, though it is needful we should know it for ourselves, that we should have a taste of this bitter cup in our own most painful experience, that we may know the sweetness of the cup of salvation when presented to our lips by free and sovereign grace. Nothing but the mighty power of God Himself can ever turn this enemy into a friend! "Once you were alienated from God and were His enemies, separated from Him by your evil thoughts and actions, yet now He has brought you back as His friends. He has done this through His death on the cross in His own human body. As a result, He has brought you into the very presence of God, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before Him without a single fault." Colossians 1:21-22 I will give you rest Are you ever weary . . . of the world, of sin, of self, of everything below the skies? If so, you want something to give you rest. You look to SELF—it is but shifting sand, tossed here and there with the restless tide, and ever casting up mire and dirt. No holding ground; no anchorage; no rest there. You look to OTHERS—you see what man is, even the very best of men in their best state—how fickle, how unstable, how changing and changeable; how weak even when willing to help; how more likely to add to, than relieve your distress; if desirous to sympathize with and comfort you in trouble and sorrow, how short his arm to help, how unsatisfactory his aid to relieve! You find no rest there. You lean upon the WORLD—it is but a broken reed which runs into your hand and pierces you. You find no rest there. So look where you will, there is no rest for the sole of your foot. But there is a rest. Our blessed Lord says, "Come to Me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest." Matthew 11:28 That which is highly esteemed among men "That which is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God." Luke 16:15 The pride, the ambition, the pleasures, the amusements, in which we see thousands and tens of thousands engaged—and sailing down the stream into a dreadful gulf of eternity—are all an abomination in the sight of God. Whereas, such things as . . . faith, hope, love, humility, brokenness of heart, tenderness of conscience, contrition of spirit, sorrow for sin, self-loathing, self-abasement, looking to Jesus, taking up the cross, denying one's self, walking in the strait and narrow path that leads to eternal life—in a word, the power of godliness—these things are despised by all—and by none so much as mere heady professors who have a name to live while dead. "That which is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God." Luke 16:15 Invincibly and irresistibly drawn As the Lord is pleased to enlighten his mind, the Christian sees . . . such a beauty, such a blessedness, such a heavenly sweetness, such a divine loveliness, such a fullness of surpassing grace, such tender condescension, such unwearied patience, such infinite compassion, in the Lord of life and glory—that he is as if invincibly and irresistibly drawn by these attractive influences to come to His feet to learn of Him. So far as the Lord is pleased to reveal Himself in some measure to his soul, by the sweet glimpses and glances which he thus obtains of His Person and countenance, he is drawn to His blessed Majesty by cords of love to look up unto Him and beg of Him that He would drop His word with life and power into his heart.

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PEARLS from PHILPOT - Volume 8

J.C. Philpot

J.C. Philpot (1802 - 1869)

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