Entangled, perplexed & distressed
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How many of the Lord's people are continually under bondage to evil! What power the lusts of the flesh have over some—how perpetually they are entangled with everything sensual and carnal! What power the pride of the heart has over another! And what strength covetousness exercises over a third! What power the love of the world and the things of time and sense exercise over a fourth!
How then are they to overcome sin? By making resolutions? By endeavouring to overcome it in their own strength? No! Sin will always break through man's strength. It will always be stronger than any resolution we can make not to be overcome by it. The Lord allows His people to be so long and often entangled, perplexed and distressed, that they may learn this secret—which is hidden from all but God's living family—that the strength of Christ is made perfect in their weakness.
Have not some of you had to learn this lesson very painfully? There was a time when you thought you would get better and better, holier and holier—that you would not only not walk in open sin as before, but would not be entangled by temptation—overcome by besetting lusts—or cast down by hidden snares. There was a time when you thought you were going forward—attaining some more strength—some better wisdom than you believed you once possessed. How has it been with you? Have these expectations ever been realized? Have you ever attained these fond hopes? Has sin become weaker? Has the world become less alluring? Have your lusts become tamer? Has your temper become milder? Have the corruptions of your heart become feebler and feebler?
If I can read the heart of some poor tried, tempted soul here present, he would say, "No! To my shame and sorrow, be it spoken, I find on the contrary that sin is stronger and stronger—that the evils of my heart are more and more powerful than ever I knew them in my life—and as to my own endeavours to overcome them, I find indeed that they are fainter and fainter, and weaker and weaker. This it is that casts me down. If I could have more strength against sin—if I could stand more boldly against Satan—if I could overcome my besetting lusts—live more to God's glory—and be holier and holier—then, then, I could have some comfort. But to feel myself so continually baffled, so perpetually disconcerted, so incessantly cast down by the workings of my corrupt nature—it is this, it is this that cuts so keenly—it is this, it is this that tries me so deeply!"
My friend, you are on the high road to victory. This is the very way by which you are to overcome. When you feel weaker and weaker—poorer and poorer—guiltier and guiltier—viler and viler—so that really through painful experience you are compelled to call yourself, not in the language of mock humility, but in the language of self abhorrence—the chief of sinners—then you are on the high road to victory. Then the blood of the Lamb is applied to the sinner's conscience, and the Word of God's testimony comes with power into his soul—it gives him the victory over those lusts with which he was before entangled—it brings him out of the world that had so allured him—and breaks to pieces the dominion of sin under which he had been so long labouring.
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