Sick of sin, sick of self, sick of the world
Back to Man's religion & God's religion
"Delight in the Lord; and He will give you the desires of your heart." Psalm 37:4
By nature we delight in SIN. It is the very element of our nature—and even after the Lord has called us by His grace and quickened us by his Spirit, there is the same love to sin in the heart as there was before. We delight in it—we would wallow in it—take our full enjoyment of it—and swim in it as a fish swims in the waters of the sea!
By nature we also are prone to IDOLATRY. Self is the grand object of all our sensual and carnal worship. Our own exaltation, our own amusement, our own pleasure, our owngratification. Something whereby SELF may be flattered, admired, adored, delighted—is the grand end and aim of man's natural worship. By nature we also delight in the WORLD. It is our element, our home, what our carnal hearts are intimately blended with.
From all these things, then, which are intrinsically evil—which a pure and holy God must hate with absolute abhorrence—we must be weaned and effectually divorced—we need to have these things embittered to us. All the time we are doing homage and worship to self—all the time we are loving the world—all the time we delight in sin—all the time we are setting up idols in the secret chambers of imagery—there is no delighting ourselves in the Lord. We cannot delight ourselves in the Lord until we are purged of creature love—until the idolatry of our hearts is not merely manifested, but hated and abhorred—until by cutting temptations, sharp exercises, painful perplexities, and various sorrows, we are brought to this state—to be sick of SIN, sick of SELF, sick of the WORLD.
Until we are brought to loathe ourselves, we are not brought to that spot where none but God Himself can comfort, please, or make the soul really happy. Now the very means that God employs to embitter the world to us are cutting and grievous dispensations—as unexpected reverses in fortune—or afflictions of body, of family, or of soul.
But these very means the Lord employs to divorce our carnal union from the world, stir up the self-pity, the murmuring, the peevishness, and the rebelliousness of our nature, so that we think we are being very harshly dealt with, in being compelled to walk in this trying path.
But only by these cutting dispensations are we eventually brought to delight ourselves in Him, who will give us the desires of our heart. How long you shall be walking in this painful path—how heavy your trials—what their duration shall be—how deep you may have to sink—how cutting your afflictions may be in body or soul, God has not defined, and we cannot. But they must work until they have produced this result—weaned, divorced, and separated us from all that we naturally love and idolatrously cleave unto—and all that we adulterously roam after. If our trials have not done this, they must go on until they produce that effect.
The burden must be laid upon the back, affliction must try the mind, perplexities must encumber the feet, until we are brought to this point—that none but the Lord Himself, with a taste of His dying love, can comfort our hearts, or give us that inward peace and joy which our soul is taught to crave after.
Back to Man's religion & God's religion