Thursday, May 21, 2009

Treating the Book of God with Neglect



I would not malign modern Christendom, but I am persuaded that crowds of professors treat the Book of God with very wicked neglect; for we frequently meet with mistakes which are so absurd that no habitual students of the Word of God could have fallen into them. So many of you take your religion at second hand; you borrow it from the preacher; you copy it from your grandmothers; you follow custom as your guide, and not the voice of God; you do not search the Book of the Lord to discover whether these things be so or not. Why, great multitudes of people go blundering on like Jehu, supposing that they must be right; the uncomfortable but very prudent thought that perhaps all may be wrong has never occurred to them, and a resort to the “law and to the testimony” appearing to them to be altogether superfluous.

Now, my dear friends, I do not see how a servant can be thought to be faithful who is utterly careless as to his master’s will. Solemnly I believe that some professors do not wish to know their Lord’s will thoroughly; there are certain duties whose performance would be unpleasant, and therefore they do not want to have their consciences too much enlightened upon the subject; they shun the light lest they should stand reproved. Brother, if I am afraid of light, let me rest assured that for some evil reason I have good cause to be afraid of it. If my doctrinal opinions or my daily actions are such that I dare not put them into the scale of God’s Word, and give them a thorough pondering, I have reason to suspect that I shall be found wanting at the last. Oh that every one of us would diligently seek with humble and obedient spirit to sit at Jesus’ feet and learn of him!

From a sermon entitled "Heedlessness In Religion," delivered April 15, 1866. Image by eye2eye under Creative Commons License.

1 comment:

Maggie Ann said...

These devotionals are such a blessing...a lighthouse in a dark land. We are blessed with a good Bible teaching church that teaches this very thing. Many, so many are not or do not care. Thank you for this site!