Let us not displease His heart

Cross, crabbed, morose natures do not please the Lord. Unkind husbands, fractious wives, rebellious children, and domineering parents are far from pleasing him. God cannot smile upon oppression, craftiness, greed, or the grinding of the poor. Neither is “covetousness, which is idolatry,” pleasing with God. He that is covetous, angers the great Giver of all good, whose liberal soul cannot endure churls and misers. The like is true of all worldliness; the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, the pride of life, these are things which God condemns; in them he hath no pleasure whatsoever.

O ye believers, I pray ye purge yourselves of all filthiness of the flesh and of the spirit, and as for the deeds of darkness, have no fellowship with them, but rather reprove them. Come ye out from among them, be ye separate, touch not the unclean thing, and then will you please your heavenly Father.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "The Christian's Motto," delivered March 22, 1874. Image by Paul Bica on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

The proud He will abase

Shall Jesus, who had all things in himself, be lowly, and shall we, who owe all to his charity, be lifted up? God forbid.

Beloved, above all things it is dangerous for a Christian to be exalted above measure, for if he be, he will rob God of his glory, and this is a high crime and misdemeanor. The Lord has said, “I will not give my glory to another.” To give God’s glory to graven images is bad, but to usurp it for ourselves is by no means better. I see no difference between the worship of a God of stone and the worship of a God of flesh. Self is as degrading an idol as Juggernaut or Kalee. God will not honor that man who retains honor for himself. The meek he will exalt, the proud he will abase.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "The Thorn In The Flesh," delivered December 8, 1872. Image by Robert S. Donovan on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

A word of warning to foolish virgins

We have seen - who has not that has had any experience in the religious world? - we have seen our leaders turn their backs in the day of battle; and our teachers fail to sustain their own character. Ah! And we have the painful conviction that there are others who are not discovered yet, whose sins do not go beforehand unto judgment, but follow after; who are nevertheless tainted at the core. There are the many covetous professors who are as grasping and as grinding as if they never professed to be Christians; and you know that “covetousness is idolatry.” There are the many time-serving Christians, who hold with the world and with Christ too; and ye know that we cannot serve two masters. There are the many secret sinners among Christians, who have their petty vices which come not under human observation, and who, because they are thought to be good, write themselves down among the godly; now we know there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, and woe to them when their secret sins shall be published on the house-tops.

Then we have the legal professors, who trust to their own works, and shall find that the curse of Sinai shall wither them. And what shall I more say? Have we not many who are not so inconsistent that we could put our finger upon any open sin sufficient to deserve excommunication, but who are guilty of enormous spiritual wickedness? They are dead, they bring forth no fruit; their hearts are hard as a millstone with regard to the conversion of sinners; they have not faith of God’s elect; they do not live by faith; they have not the spirit of Christ, and therefore they are none of his. God knoweth we have sought to use all care and diligence in this Church, both to keep out unworthy persons and to cast out unhallowed livers; but, despite all that, we cannot but be conscious, and we tell it you faithfully, that the enemy still continues to sow tares among the wheat. The gold is mixed with the dross and the wine with water: for evil men thrust themselves into the heritage of the Lord. When our muster-roll shall be revised at last, how many out of our more than two thousand members will be found to be base-born pretenders unto godliness! O my brethren, I conjure you, by the precious blood of Christ, which was not shed to make you hypocrites, but shed that a sincere people might show forth His praise; I beseech you, search and look lest at the last it be said of you, “Mene, Mene Tekel, thou art weighed in the balances and found wanting.”

From a sermon entitled "Self-Delusion," delivered October 19, 1862. Flickr photo by Eric Hill; some rights reserved.

The invented gods of man

Our God is a spirit, and his hands made the heavens and the earth: well may we worship him, and we need not be disturbed at the sneering question of those who are so insane as to refuse to adore the living God, and yet bow their knees before images of their own carving. We may make an application of all this to the times in which we are now living. The god of modern thought is the creation of the thinker himself, evolved out of his own consciousness, or fashioned according to his own notion of what a god should be. Now, it is evident that such a being is no God. It is impossible that there should be a God at all except the God of revelation. A god who can be fashioned by our own thoughts is no more a God than the image manufactured or produced by our own hands. The true God must of necessity be his own revealer. It is clearly impossible that a being who can be excogitated and comprehended by the reason of man should be the infinite and incomprehensible God. Their idols are blinded reason and diseased thought, the product of men's muddled brains, and they will come to nought.

From "The Treasury of David," exposition of Psalm 115:4; Flickr photo by KellyB.; some rights reserved.