“The Summer is Past” …. (Not Written For Babes in Christ) The People don’t know what time it is ……. They keep backsliding …….. They refuse to repent …….. They have no shame ……… They will not be healed ……… “The Summer Is Past” Backsliding (What it is and what it does !) ……. It is an evil in its nature; it is a great sin against God, involving the basest ingratitude, the abuse of the greatest mercies, and the violation of the most solemn vows. It is an evil in its influence. ….. (1) Upon self. It arrests the progress of the soul, darkens its prospects, curtails its liberty, and destroys its usefulness. (2) Upon others. It encourages the religious skeptic, it staggers the anxious inquirer, and it embarrasses the friends of truth. Why? ……… Not by the force of circumstances over which they have no control. No power in the universe drives them back against their will. Not by the withdrawal of heavens helping agency. The causes are in themselves. Neglect of the means of spiritual improvement, the study of the Scriptures, and the ministry of the Word; the cherishing of some secret sin; engrossment in worldly pursuits; fellowship with skeptical and ungodly men. WE MUST OBEY THE CALL OF GOD. ……….. At the appointed time the birds feel an impulse or moving within them that they must be going, they congregate together, like swallows in autumn, all ready for their long journey. So in the same way, by the movements of conscience and the voice of Divine truth, God is calling us. Abraham obeyed that call, and left his idolatrous surroundings, and so did the fishers of Galilee, they left their nets and followed Christ. During the summer, when they are in the fields, they often come within reach of the gun; but when they start for their annual flight southward they take their places mid-heaven, and go straight as a mark. The longest rifle that was ever brought to shoulder cannot reach them. We fly so low that we are within range of the world, the flesh, and the devil. So poor is the type of piety in the Church of God at this day that men actually caricature the idea that there is any such thing as a higher life. Moles never did believe in eagles. But because we have not reached these heights ourselves, shall we deride the fact that there are any such heights? I do not believe that God exhausted all His grace in Paul, and Latimer, and Edward Payson. I believe there are higher points of Christian attainment to be reached in the future ages of the Christian world. His conduct is of the most hardening nature. All sin is so. He who sins today makes the commission of sin easier to conscience tomorrow. There is a progress in sin as well as in holiness. And there is no sin of a more heart-hardening nature than this of quenching convictions. When men make their neck an iron sinew, the brow becomes brass. Obduracy in resisting God is always succeeded by effrontery in sin. He who stifles convictions willingly continues under the sentence of condemnation, consents to it, and seals himself up under it. Convictions are the messengers of incensed justice, sent forth against the transgressor, warning him of the necessity of fleeing into the city or refuge. He who refuses to listen, scorns the refuge provided, and runs his risk of meeting with the avenger. The expected time of consideration may never arrive………………. Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and we have not the least reason to think that he ever returned. God may justly deny heart mollifying grace. …………… They rebelled and vexed His holy Spirit, and He was turned to be their enemy. He may cease to be a reprover. This is often the case. When the sinner continues to stifle convictions, God takes away His messengers. Or, the means may be continued, and yet be altogether blasted to them. The Bible becomes a book that is sealed. ……… The Word is a dead letter. The most awakening sermons leave them as fast asleep in sin as they found them. For the Lord hath said, My Spirit will not always strive with man. He may contend with them in the course of His providence. He hath long fought against them, as He threatens the Church of Sardis, with the sword of His mouth. Now He will fight against them with the sword of His hand. God gives them up to their own lusts. ……….. A man needs no other devil to possess him than these. The name of such a possession is legion. Thus he becomes exceeding fierce in sin, and hurries on headlong to destruction, as if it advanced of itself, with too slow a pace. In judgment He may lay occasions of sin in their way. God can tempt no man. He forces no man to sin, because He infinitely hates it. But when He sees sinners determined on iniquity, He sometimes chooses their delusions, as He threatens in His Word: I also will choose their delusions, and will bring their fears upon them. God may judicially harden their hearts. …………….. It is one of the inconceivable mysteries of Divine operation, that God should in righteous judgment give up a sinner to obduracy, and yet be at an infinite distance from the sin. But so it is. ……………….. God may refuse to hear, although they should call. He laughs at the sinner when trying to break His bands. But His holy scorn will be far more awful in the end. God reasons with us from what we do in other cases. Shall they fall; (ver. 4). He makes us judges in our own cause. If a man slips and gets a fall, does he lie where he fell, without making any attempt to get up again? Why, then, God saith, doth this people what no others do? Why do they fall, and rise not? stray, and return not? Despair of pardon leads many to continue in sin. But is there cause for this despair? Is it God that is unwilling? No; they refused to return. The Lord, as it were, saith, How often would I have gathered them together, and they would not! My outward calling you by the Word, My inward moving by my Spirit, My many benefits, My gentle chastisements, My long. suffering — all show, that I was willing for your return. God reasons with us from His own anxious desire. …………… He represents Himself to us as hearkening with a patient, attentive ear, if He may catch from us the words of repentance. And what does God expect to hear from us? What have I done? These words, said not with the lips only, but from the deep feelings of the heart, may lead to better things. How vile was the act of sin in itself! How full is it of shame and remorse! What have I done, as in the sight of God, so fearful in power, so glorious in majesty? What have I done as for any profit derived any passing, empty pleasure? How have I injured my body and my soul! God sends us to the birds of the sky; to creatures without reason, that we, reasonable beings, may learn our duty from them. Yea, the stork, etc. These birds have an appointed time for coming back; they know and observe it. There is an accepted time, if we would know it; if, like the birds, we would observe, and take it; and the Scripture tells us, that that time is now. Many drown their convictions in the mire of their lusts. …………………. When conscience is, in some measure, awakened because of former sins, they endeavor to overpower it, by making its load the heavier, that, if possible, it may sink under it altogether, and trouble them no more. Many extinguish convictions by flying to the world; multitudes are in this manner ruined for eternity. Even the innocent enjoyments of life prove the destruction of myriads. The hearers of the Gospel often quench their convictions by doubting the truth of the doctrine. In this way did sin make its entrance into the world; and all along, it has proved a great support of it. The unbelief of the heart comes in to the assistance of the love of sin. Many stifle their convictions by turning them into ridicule. ……………. They try to laugh themselves out of convictions just as a coward endeavors to get rid of his fear, by inward ridicule: not that they really disbelieve the things that give them trouble, but they wish to do so. And by habituating themselves to laugh at the shaking of the spear (you shall not surely die), like the coward at heart, they may acquire a fictitious courage, and really get the mastery over them. Men overpower their convictions by extenuating sin, or apprehending that they are not guilty in the eye of the law, because free of grosser immoralities (I thank God; I am not like him). But this is as great folly, in a spiritual sense, as it would be for a thief or robber to imagine that he was in no danger of the sentence of the law of his country, because he had not yet committed murder; or, for a man indulging himself in strong drink, to apprehend that he run no risk of intoxication, because he could still hold the cup to his head. The heart often stifles convictions by representing eternal concerns as of little importance. By far the greatest part of men, although they see a dying world around them, live as if they alone were to be immortal. Or, one might be apt to imagine from their conduct, that they altogether denied the immortality of their souls, and believed that they would perish with their bodies (when I die its over). Many endeavor to fly from a wounded conscience, and so hold fast deceit by flying from the means of grace. The only condition, on which such persons will submit to the sound of the Gospel, is that they have nothing but smooth things prophesied to them (Just come as you are; God hates sin but He loves sinners). Others extinguish convictions by magnifying the difficulties of religion. ………. It seems to them a great hardship to perform so many duties, to be instant in season and out of season. They reckon Gods commandments grievous, and the reward scarcely an equivalent for the labor (there are too many requirements). Convictions are often stifled by the hope of abundance of time, and the promise of a future consideration. Thousands and ten thousands fall the miserable victims of a false hope. When the concerns of their precious souls intrude themselves on their thoughts, they endeavor to banish them, from the expectation of length of days, and of a continued enjoyment of a merciful dispensation (take your time; God understands and knows you heart and that you mean well). WHEN A RELIGIOUS PEOPLE MAY BE SAID TO BE A BACKSLIDING …….. Grace, in the present state, does not entirely destroy nature. Large measures of moral corruption remain in the hearts of the best of men in the most religious nations. So, every people, who profess to believe the Gospel and live under its influence, have something in them that dislikes the character, the laws, and the government of God. On this account they are bent to backsliding from Him. Among every religious people there is a great, if not the greatest part of them, who are under only the restraining, and not the sanctifying, influence of the Gospel. It is when they break over such restraints as ought to keep them from backsliding from Him; and they are perpetually backsliding, while they are constantly breaking over one restraint after another. They break over the restraints of His goodness. He promised to make them the most numerous, the most wealthy, and the most respectable nation on earth. A religious people who are perpetually backsliding grow worse and worse under the restraint of Divine Authority …………….. He gave His peculiar people His judgments, His statutes, and His laws, which were far superior to those of any other nation. There was another way by which God often laid a restraint upon His backsliding people, and that was by His rod of correction; but they often broke over this restraint, and persisted in their wicked ways. A perpetually backsliding people will hold fast deceit, and refuse to return to God from whom they have revolted, even under the severest tokens of His wrath. They delude themselves by backsliding very gradually. They first forget the goodness of God in one smaller favor, and then in another; and this leads them to forget God in greater and greater favors, until Divine goodness loses all its restraining influence over them. In the same imperceptible manner they break over all the restraints of Divine authority and of Divine corrections……………………. Such a gradual backsliding becomes more and more habitual, and, of course, more and more insensible. Every backslider always feels self-condemned for the first instances of his deviation from the path of duty. But one deviation naturally leads to another, and serves to palliate it, till self-regret and self-reproach cease to operate, and men feel as easy and innocent in their gradual declensions as they did before they began to backslide; and, like Ephraim, while they have grey hairs here and there upon them, they know it not. All backsliding consists in mens walking in the ways of their hearts, instead of walking in the ways of Gods commandments. They backslide because they love to backslide; and what they love, they endeavor to persuade themselves is right. If they are reproved, they will justify rather than condemn their backsliding. Backsliders are more or less under the blinding and deluding influence of the great adversary of souls. He is now deluding the entire heathen world, and insensibly involving them in fatal darkness, and leading them blindly to destruction. And he is more or less concerned in spreading errors and delusions in the entire Christian world, to those who love and hold fast deceit. Will we Change? (A change we can believe in?) ……….. It appears from the description of a religious people, that we in this country deserve that character. If I have given a just description of a perpetually backsliding people, that character justly belongs to us. It appears, that our national sins are very great and aggravated. …….. They are of the nature of backsliding, which greatly enhances their criminality. Backsliding is not a sin of ignorance, but a sin of knowledge. Our national vices, immoralities, and errors, have been committed against greater light and stronger restraints than those of any other nation. It appears from what has been said, that no external means or motives will reform a backsliding people. They backslide so gradually and insensibly, and are so fond of their backslidings, and are under such a powerful influence of the great deceiver, that they will hold fast deceit, and refuse to repent, return, and reform. Their perpetual backsliding is perpetually stupefying their hearts and consciences; for they feel no guilt and fear no danger. They are certainly out of the reach of men and means to save them from ruin. Hence, This people have abundant occasion for fasting and prayer. …………….. Their situation is extremely critical and dangerous, and every way adapted to affect every benevolent heart. It is the imperious duty of all the Noahs, Jobs, and Daniels to arise and plead with God to take His own work into His own hands, and bow the hearts of this people to Himself. Moreover thou shalt say unto them, Thus saith the LORD; Shall they fall, and not arise? shall he turn away, and not return? --- Why then is this people of Jerusalem slidden back by a perpetual backsliding? they hold fast deceit, they refuse to return Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered? Jer 8:4-22
Posted on: Sun, 23 Nov 2014 07:12:03 +0000
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